Word: spacecrafts
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...spacecraft have their own personal quirks, and 204 had been balky from the start. As an Apollo engineer said: "The first article from the factory cannot come out without birth pains." The spacecraft gave repeated trouble. The nozzle of its big engine shattered during one test. The heat shield of the command module split wide open and the ship sank like a stone when it was dropped at high speed into a water tank. Certain kinds of fuel caused ruptures in attitude-control fuel tanks. The cooling system failed, causing a two-month delay for redesign. But all the bugs...
Things progressed smoothly enough; a few "glitches" (minor problems) stalled the operation. At countdown-minus-10-minutes, the procedure was stopped again because of static in the communications channels between the spacecraft and technicians at the operations center. It took 15 minutes to correct the problem, and the simulated count was ready to begin again. Then, at 6:31 p.m., a voice cried from inside the capsule: "Fire aboard the space-craft...
Grissom got that chance when he was picked as the pilot of America's first two-man spacecraft. With the launching of Gemini 3 on its three-orbit flight on March 23, 1965, Grissom became the first man ever to journey twice into space. Aided by Co-Pilot John Young, he scored yet another space first when he took over the controls himself, skill- fully piloted the craft through a series of tricky orbit-changing maneuvers. After that success, Grissom seemed to loosen up. The Apollo flight would have made him the only man to enter space three times...
Although the moon has lately been giving up many of its ancient secrets to prying spacecraft, it has clung stubbornly to one-the genesis of its own existence as an earth satellite. With monotonous regularity, scientists have punched holes in theories that the moon was torn, Eve-like, from the earth's side; that the earth and moon condensed simultaneously, as neighbors, from the same blob of primordial dust; or that the moon was a planetary interloper accidentally captured by the earth's gravity. Says Nobel Laureate Chemist Harold Urey: "All explanations for the origin of the moon...
Died. Lieut. Colonel Virgil I. ("Gus") Grissom, 40, Lieut. Colonel Edward H. White, 36, and Lieut. Commander Roger B. Chaffee, 31; in an explosion while testing their Apollo spacecraft; at Cape Kennedy, Fla. (see THE NATION...