Word: spacecrafts
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...When the great scorecard for 1988 Soviet achievements is totted up, Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika campaign may receive a modest 8.0 (a bit wobbly on the takeoff) and the return of the Soyuz spacecraft will be lucky to secure a 7.5 (very shaky on the landing). But the Soviet gymnasts, men and women alike, will score a 10 because their performance in Seoul was just that: perfect...
Trouble struck the Soyuz TM-5 spacecraft soon after it left the Soviet orbiting space station Mir and started on its way home. The cosmonauts had just completed a six-day mission in which they performed routine experiments with the two Mir cosmonauts, who are spending a year in space. Lyakhov, 47, and Mohmand, 29, an Afghan pilot, had returned to the two-stage Soyuz capsule for the three-hour trip back to the Soviet Union, leaving Physician Valeri Polyakov behind to continue monitoring the health of the station crew...
...separation from Mir early Tuesday morning, then crawled into the cramped re-entry vehicle and jettisoned the compartment of the Soyuz craft that contained toilet facilities and living space. They had just settled in to await the firing of the computer-controlled rocket that was programmed to decelerate the spacecraft from its orbital speed for the descent into the atmosphere. Accounts of what happened next differ, but indications are that as the ship passed through a twilight region of space between day and night, an infrared sensor, which fixes the spacecraft's position in relation to earth, was confused...
When the re-entry manuever was attempted again, three hours later, the rocket abruptly stopped after just seven seconds. Reason: it had apparently not occurred to either the cosmonauts or the ground controllers to reprogram the computer for the spacecraft's new position. Lyakhov responded by pressing a manual button to restart the engine, but the computer again cut off the rocket. Admitted the cosmonaut afterward: "I am not excusing myself. There was fault there...
...solution, many scientists believe, is to impart artificial gravity -- in the form of centrifugal force -- to the spacecraft. This might be accomplished by spinning a very large craft around its own axis. Other schemes envision three ships hooked together in a cartwheel-like arrangement that makes three revolutions per minute, or two vehicles attached by a half-mile-long tether rotating through space as the entire system speeds toward Mars. Still another idea is to schedule a daily workout for each crew member inside an on-board centrifuge, where resisting the centrifugal force would simulate working in gravity...