Word: spacecrafts
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Perhaps not, but next day NASA abruptly announced a top-level, "accident-related" shakeup. Brilliant, energetic Joe Shea, 40, the Apollo spacecraft program manager, was shifted from Houston to Washington, where he will become the deputy associate administrator for manned space flight. His job went to the deputy director of the Houston Manned Spacecraft Center, George Low. NASA insisted that Shea was not being demoted. But even Shea's friends were unsure what his appointment as aide to Manned Space Flight Chief Dr. George Mueller meant. As one of them put it, "If Joe stays in Washington...
...prove their thesis, NASA engineers took a test Apollo spacecraft in Houston and duplicated the conditions aboard Apollo 204 during the tragedy-without humans. The suspect bundles were put in place and made to malfunction. The fire started. It remained invisible for five or six seconds and then came into view from Chaffee's seat. During the real fire, it was at this moment that Chaffee sounded the alarm. From then on, the pattern and intensity of the test fire followed almost to the second the pattern and intensity of the fire aboard Apollo 204 as reconstructed by scientists...
...lift-off had been set: February 1, 1968, at 10:35 a.m. Now it looks as if the first manned test flight will just be going up then, a full year late. That does not necessarily mean a year's delay in trying for the moon, however. Since spacecraft, rocket and other production will continue throughout the coming year despite the lack of manned missions, Apollo equipment will be all set and ready to go-even allowing for last-minute modifications-almost as soon as each previous flight is ended. And the moon bid could come as soon...
Independently launched into orbit by a rocket or carried aloft in a mother spacecraft, lifting bodies will be maneuvered in space with thrusters, much like conventional spacecraft. After they enter the atmosphere, however, the wingless craft will be piloted like gliders to land at existing airports, using their control flaps to maneuver and deriving necessary lift from their aerodynamic shape. Thus the reusable ships could probably become the space age's most utilitarian vehicles...
...astronaut stranded in orbit could transfer to a small lifting body stowed aboard his disabled spacecraft. Detaching the space lifeboat (TIME, March 10), he could fire its retrorocket to drop out of orbit, then glide through the atmosphere to a convenient airport. Larger lifting bodies could ferry men and supplies to space stations and perform orbital missions themselves. The craft's ability to maneuver to an airport and land safely would eliminate the need for the costly 10,000-man recovery force that now must be deployed for each space mission...