Word: spacecrafts
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...heat-scarred spacecraft settled to a soft, parachute landing on the steppes of Soviet Kazakhstan, a recovery helicopter was ready and waiting to touch down right alongside. Members of the recovery team raced to the apparently undamaged Soyuz 11, unfastened the hatch and swung it open to assist Cosmonauts Georgy Dobrovolsky, Vladislav Volkov and Viktor Patsayev. Still strapped in their seats, the cosmonauts did not respond. All three were dead. Russia's triumphant space mission, which had set new records for man's endurance in space, assembled the first manned space station and added new luster to Soviet...
...rocket to slow the ship down, drop it out of orbit and send it back into the earth's atmosphere. The rocket functioned perfectly. At the end of the burn, however, there was an ominous development. Long minutes before the radio blackout that always occurs as a returning spacecraft is enveloped by hot, ionized gases, Soyuz 11 unexpectedly lapsed into silence...
Through telemetry from the spacecraft, the Russians may well have detected a failure aboard Soyuz-or even the moment of death. But except to say that the cosmonauts' deaths were being investigated by a government commission. Soviet space officials gave no explanation of the disaster...
Their feelings are expressed by former scientist-astronaut Brian O'Leary in his book, The Making of an Ex-Astronaut (Houghton Mifflin). O'Leary denounces what he calls the undisguised "test-pilot dominance" at Houston's Manned Spacecraft Center. Largely at the insistence of Donald K. ("Deke") Slayton, the influential director of flight-crew operations, only experienced military and civilian fliers have been chosen for Apollo crews. Such skilled aviators were surely essential on the first space flights. But now that flight and landing techniques are well developed and scientific experimentation has come to the fore...
...bright flash with a large number of white particles, like a snow blizzard." After two firings, they managed to raise Salyut's orbit to 161 by 175 miles. That increased elevation should give the space station at least another month's life-enough time for other Soyuz spacecraft to dock with...