Word: spacecrafts
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Although this particular cross-country trip is fictional, the inconveniences experienced by the passengers and crew are all too real. In an age when man can rendezvous and dock spacecraft high above the earth, travel to the moon with pinpoint accuracy and send payloads to much more distant targets in the solar system, the control of air traffic closer to home is still crude and imprecise in comparison. As a result, runways are overcrowded on the ground, air lanes are jammed aloft. Particularly near airports, spacing between aircraft is often so hard to control that near-misses are dangerously familiar...
...dream about life on Mars seemed to fade for good in 1965 when the first closeup pictures of the red planet were radioed back to earth by the U.S. spacecraft Mariner 4. The photographs revealed a barren planet that looked as dead as the moon. Lately, this view of Mars has been radically revised. Contrary to the first photographic impression, U.S. scientists told an international space conference in Madrid last week, Mars is still undergoing sharp climatic changes. Violent geological activity has left scars all across its crust and, most significant, there may be enough water on its surface...
Russian Failure. These dramatic findings have come from the extraordinarily productive Mariner 9 spacecraft. Still alive and transmitting, the 1,200-lb. robot has sent back more than 6,800 pictures since it began circling the planet last November. By patiently matching and assembling these photographs, scientists at Caltech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory have put together a jigsaw-puzzle-like map of a strip of Mars extending 30° above and below the equator as well as an overall view of its south polar cap. Indeed, detailed photographs, showing features as small as 100 yards across, were among...
Even to veteran splashdown watchers Apollo 16's return to earth last week was a spectacle of rare beauty. The slow blossoming of the spacecraft's three orange and white parachutes against the bright, azure sky seemed designed for maximum drama. Then, in a final demonstration of precision, the spacecraft Casper hit the water only one mile off the bow of the recovery carrier Ti-tonderoga. Once out of its natural element, Casper immediately capsized; it bobbed nose down in the choppy South Pacific for five minutes until the astronauts-strapped in upside-down and rapidly becoming queasy...
...spacecraft emerged from behind the moon at the beginning of their 13th lunar revolution, Mattingly reported some chilling news: the backup circuit on a steering motor controlling Casper's bell-shaped engine nozzle during firings was swiveling the nozzle erratically back and forth-and Mattingly could do nothing about it. The astronauts were in no immediate danger, but under mission rules the command module's primary and secondary guidance systems must both be operational before a lunar landing can be attempted. The reason: if the command ship's engine cannot be controlled, the rocket power...