Word: spacecrafts
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...going to be able to go on and complete the intended duration of this flight. He had just made one of the toughest decisions of his career, he was confident he had made the right one, and with each passing hour, each passing day that the spacecraft stayed aloft, he was proven correct. Gemini looked ready to finish its mission. "The longer we go," said Kraft, "the better...
Launch to Retrofire. Command post of the tense scientific conflict, where Chris Kraft and his crew matched wits with the unpredictable troubles plaguing a pair of orbiting astronauts, was the brand-new $170 million Manned Spacecraft Center southeast of Houston, near Galveston Bay (see color). Started only three years ago, the center now has more than 30 completed buildings that rise like an attractive college campus above the dreary salt flats where scraggly Brahman cattle used to graze. Another 15 buildings are planned or under construction...
Inside the center, out of the blazing Texas sun, every corridor hums with space-age intensity. Besides directing spacecraft in flight and training astronauts, the Houston center also develops new engineering techniques and supervises the testing of every piece of equipment that will be used−from transistors to space-suit zippers to fuel cells. A vibration laboratory shakes the very innards out of equipment; a thermochemical complex tests rocket thrusters. In the simulation and training building, an astronaut can climb inside a spacecraft and practice all the functions of a mission, from launch to retrofire...
...cross connections. The ground floor houses IBM 7094 II computers that monitor on-board systems of telemetry. On the second floor of the windowless structure is a master control room, with four rows of 20 consoles facing a huge world map on which the path of a spacecraft is projected. Above, on the third floor, is a second control room, permitting the center to run simulations of future flights while a real flight is in progress...
...Langley days, but he was ideally suited for the job in both training and temperament. "There's a natural wedding between the technologies of aircraft test flight and space test flight," explains Dr. Robert Gilruth, Kraft's boss at Langley and now director of the Manned Spacecraft Center at Houston. Kraft even lost his ulcer in the satisfaction of his new duties...