Word: spacecrafts
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...pioneering days of manned space flight, U.S. astronauts began affectionately bestowing names such as "Molly Brown" on their spacecraft. But NASA officials soon decided that nick names were undignified for craft involved in a historic national effort. Word went out to put an end to name-call ing. Even official labels had to be made more solemn. On the theory that Lunar Excursion Module (LEM) was too frivolous a name for the moon-landing craft, NASA gravely renamed it Lunar Mod ule, thus reducing the friendly LEM to the unpronounceable...
...circled the earth in his Soyuz 4 spacecraft last week, Russian Cosmonaut Vladimir Shatalov looked down toward central Asia to watch a tiny billow of flame and smoke. It was Soyuz 5, on its way with Cosmonauts Boris Volynov, Evgeny Khrunov and Aleksei Eliseev. "I'll meet you soon in space," radioed Shatalov...
Khrunov and Eliseev entered the work compartment of their two-room ship and sealed it off from Volynov in the crew's quarters. In the other spacecraft, Shatalov sealed off his own control room. After donning new spacesuits that have individual life-support systems, Khrunov and Eliseev emerged from Soyuz 5 and space-walked across to Soyuz 4. They entered the work compartment, sealed its outside hatch behind them, brought up the pressure and then opened the compartment to join Shatalov...
...drama of the crew exchange, it was the docking that mattered most. Soviet booster rockets are dwarfed by America's Saturn 5 and cannot thrust a manned spacecraft to the moon in one leap. Instead, the Russians must assemble their lunar vehicles in earth orbit. Until last week, although they had twice docked unmanned spacecraft, no cosmonaut had piloted the pieces together...
...most unusual event of the entire flight, Borman said, occurred near the end of the mission, when the heat of re-entry ionized the air around Apollo. "The whole spacecraft was bathed in light that made you feel like you were inside a neon tube." Borman, who last week was appointed deputy director of flight-crew operations at the Manned Spacecraft Center, will not make another space flight. But he is anxious that the horizons continue to expand for other astronauts. "I do not submit that there won't be further tragedy in this program," he said...