Word: spacecrafts
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...proposed space station, occupied by half a dozen men and women at a time, will orbit several hundred miles above the earth. It will open a new world of extraterrestrial opportunity that will include scientific experimentation, zero-g manufacturing, observation of the earth, and even the launching of spacecraft to remote parts of the universe. Reagan's rhetoric was euphoric: "We can follow our dreams to distant stars, living and working in space for peaceful economic and scientific gain...
NASA, of course, does not permit alcohol aboard its spacecraft or on its facilities, but last week, after Columbia's harrowing, computer-plagued final day in orbit, the space agency had good reason to splash everyone with champagne. Sweeping out of the skies in the fading glow of a setting sun, the space shuttle settled gently onto Edwards Air Force Base's Runway 17 in the California desert with the "right on the numbers" precision only a master pilot like John Young, 53, America's premier astronaut, can muster. For seven hours and 50 minutes before that...
...that instant, the spacecraft's No. 1 computer, responsible for directing the orbiter's navigational and guidance systems, as well as general housekeeping duties, "crashed," or shut down. To the relief of Houston controllers, the No. 2 computer promptly took over. Indeed, under NASA's suspenders-and-belt philosophy, the orbiter is equipped with four electronically linked computers, plus an independently operating backup. Any one of these machines can take charge of the shuttle. About four minutes later, however, after the thrusters fired again to slow the ship, the second computer also stopped...
While Young's copilot, Air Force Major Brewster Shaw, took charge, one of three inertial measuring units, which sense any changes in the spacecraft's speed or direction, mysteriously broke down. In addition, the laws of celestial mechanics added a political problem. Each extra swing around the earth changed Columbia's path. As a result, when the ship swooped out of its last orbit, instead of coming in south of Australia and over the western Pacific, it passed only 80 miles above eastern Siberia in the militarily sensitive area of the Sakhalin Peninsula where Soviet aircraft shot...
...benevolent influence of microgravity, they were able to form a mix of aluminum and zinc, two metals that cannot easily be combined on earth. Extremely strong yet lightweight, the alloy, if it could be produced in mass quantities in space, might be useful for superstructures of airplanes or spacecraft...