Word: spacecrafts
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...fiery re-entry into the earth's atmosphere, also got a scientific onceover. Flown from the Yorktown to Hawaii, the astronauts boarded an Air Force C-141 jet transport for a 10-hr, flight to Ellington Air Force Base, just five miles from Houston's Manned Spacecraft Center...
Taking a break only on New Year's Day, the astronauts met daily in the Manned Spacecraft Center with NASA officials and scientists to review every detail of their trip to the moon, referring frequently to the 400-page flight plan and the 1,000-page transcript of radioed conversations between the spacecraft and earth. After completing their debriefing, they will travel to Washington this week for a press conference in the State Department auditorium. On the following day, they will be guests of honor in a New York City ticker-tape parade up Broadway and a state dinner...
Soon after they had left earth orbit and headed toward the moon, the astronauts pointed Apollo back toward earth and aimed a 16-mm. Maurer movie camera at the third-stage S-4B rocket, which had just been separated from the spacecraft. The resulting pictures show the receding rocket gleaming in the sunlight against a black sky as the blue, cloud-mottled earth hovers below. (Minutes earlier, Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory scientists atop a mountain in the Hawaiian Islands had used a Baker-Nunn telescopic camera to shoot a spectacular picture of the S-4B, about 120 miles high, blasting Apollo...
Despite its vital importance, the SPS engine was the only major system aboard the spacecraft designed without another complete system to back it. Like other systems, the engine had duplicate parts made to take over if its tanks, valves or propellant lines failed. But space and weight limitations had forced the manufacturer, Aerojet-General Corp., to include only a single combustion chamber, fuel injector and nozzle extension skirt (see illustration). The failure of any of these parts could have meant disaster...
During the flight of Apollo 6, the SPS engine took over from an S-4B stage that failed to restart, and by itself propelled the unmanned spacecraft to an altitude of more than 13,000 miles. On Apollo 7, its first manned flight, it was started eight times. Thus, when Borman, Lovell and Anders embarked on their mission, they had a pretty good idea that their little engine could perform its tasks flawlessly...