Word: spacecrafts
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...objected to its publication but made no move to stop it. No one else has written in comparable detail about spy satellites. Klass describes, for example, the nation's latest SAMOS (satellite and missile observation system), "the Big Bird," launched just two months ago. A giant, twelve-ton spacecraft capable of working aloft for at least several months, the Big Bird combines the capabilities of several earlier satellites. It can transmit high-quality pictures by radio, and eject capsules of exposed film which then drop by parachute. The Big Bird also includes infra-red heat-sensing equipment that allows...
...some places and take a sharply different course in others. Since the layers were probably laid down by the same lava flows, why did they veer off in different directions? The most likely explanation, according to Paul Gast, chief of lunar and planetary science at Houston's Manned Spacecraft Center, is that these flows probably preceded the cataclysmic event (presumably a large meteor impact) that created the Sea of Rains and uplifted the mountains around...
...first walk in deep space, and returned with a record-breaking haul of more than 170 lbs. of lunar rocks. But the really significant accomplishment of Apollo 15 was its scientific payoff, which in the words of Paul Cast, chief of lunar and planetary science at the Manned Spacecraft Center, will enable man to take "a real giant step in the understanding of the solar system...
...press of a button, the small, instrument-packed subsatellite will be automatically injected into an orbit around the moon. The tiny package should swing around the moon for more than a year, radioing vital data about the lunar environment. Then Worden was scheduled to climb out-side the spacecraft, edge his way back to SIM and retrieve his valuable film in history's first "walk"' in deep space 200,000 miles from earth. Finally, twelve days after the start of their journey from Cape Kennedy, the astronauts will splash down in the Pacific, ending man's most significant scientific adventure...
...land men on the moon within the decade, it frequently made space sound like a celestial Grand Prix with one purpose above all others: to beat the Russians. NASA became bloated by success and aloof from normal budgetary restraints. Engineers and jet pilots ruled Houston's Manned Spacecraft Center and NASA became the symbol of an older, less troubled America. While there may have been some minority members toiling in the back rooms, the men out front-the astronauts-have been white, middle class, and, it seemed all too often, unimaginative or insensitive. Mailer touched a raw nerve when...