Word: spacecrafts
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...three-part hatch that took 90 sec. to open, Apollo 7 has a single outward-swinging hatch that can be opened in 10 sec. To snuff out any fire that might start, there is now an emergency venting system that can reduce cabin pressure in seconds. And while the spacecraft is on the pad, a mixture of 60% oxygen and 40% nitrogen has been substituted for the 100% oxygen of flight, further reducing the danger of fire...
...paying a price for safety," says Flight Director Glynn Lunney. "The spacesuits are bulkier, the Fiberglas itches like hell, and the seat belts are difficult to cinch down because they are so stiff. But you are seeing a spacecraft several hundred percent improved." Apollo's new safety devices, and a string of successful shots during the past year, have partially restored NASA's confidence. Four unmanned Apollo spacecraft have now flown without serious mishap, two of them atop the mighty rocket Saturn...
...radar. During their week-and-a-half space journey, they will start Apollo's large, 20,500-lb.-thrust engine eight times to test its reliability. That engine literally means the difference between life and death. On actual moon missions, it will be used to guide an Apollo spacecraft into orbit around the moon, and, later, to fire the craft out of lunar orbit into a trajectory that will return it to earth...
Near the moon, the spacecraft will be braked enough to be pulled into a 60-mile-high lunar orbit. It will make ten 2-hr. circuits while the astronauts shoot movie and still pictures of the lunar surface below. Then Apollo 8 will return to earth, using re-entry techniques tested last April during the unmanned flight of Apollo...
Automatic Spacecraft. Although space officials steadfastly deny that the U.S. is racing with the Russians to land the first men on the moon, all of the planning and practicing has been carried out with one eye on the Soviet space effort. NASA officials-as well as the rest of the world-are uncomfort ably aware of the huge psychological difference between first and second place in the moon race. U.S. space officials first greeted last month's pioneering flight of Russia's Zond 5 with a mixture of admiration, envy and chagrin, certain that it was a prelude...