Word: spacecrafts
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Less than twelve minutes after liftoff, a brief boost from the S-4B third stage placed Apollo into a circular 119-mile orbit at a velocity of 17,427 m.p.h. Over the Pacific for the second time, just 2½ hrs. after launch, the spacecraft was cleared by Houston for "translunar insertion" (TLI). Firing for five minutes, the reliable S-4B engine accelerated the ship to 24,245 m.p.h., fast enough to tear it loose from the earth's gravitational embrace and send it toward the moon. At a point 43,495 miles from the moon, lunar gravity exerted a force...
...Just going over Mount Marilyn," said Armstrong, referring to a triangular-shaped peak named for the wife of Apollo 8 Astronaut James Lovell. "Now we're looking at what we call Boot Hill. On the right is the crater Censorinus P." The spacecraft passed over Sidewinder and Diamondback, two of the sinuous rills that had caused Apollo 10 Astronaut John Young to wonder "if some time long ago fish hadn't been jumping in those creeks." Commented Collins: "It looks like a couple of snakes down there in the lake...
...thing the astronauts did not observe was Apollo's companion in lunar orbit?the Soviet Union's unmanned Luna 15 moon probe (see p. 17). Arriving in the neighborhood two days before the U.S. spacecraft, Luna went into an orbit as close as ten miles from the moon and eventually landed. The chances that Luna would be visible from Apollo 11?much less collide with it?were estimated by Houston's Christopher Columbus Kraft, director of flight operations, as about "one in a billion...
...hypergolic fuels that fire the descent and ascent engines, and the pressure gauges on the helium that forces the fuels into the combustion chambers, where they burn upon contact with one another. Efficient and businesslike, they completed the check 30 minutes ahead of schedule. Two minutes before the spacecraft disappeared behind the moon on its 13th revolution, Houston advised: "We're go for undocking." Tense minutes followed until the spacecraft emerged from the far side and Armstrong reported that Eagle had wings...
...tiny organisms. Conversely, the frogman will be protected by a biological filter to screen the air that he inhales. Some scientists fear that these elaborate precautions-and those that follow-could be negated during the two brief intervals when the Apollo hatch is opened; alien organisms inside the spacecraft could take these opportunities to escape into the air and the sea. Space officials consider that an extremely remote possibility. Says Persa Bell, director of NASA's Lunar Receiving Laboratory: "The chance of bringing anything harmful back from the moon is probably one in a hundred billion...