Word: spacecrafts
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...luck seemed behind the spacecraft at last. Forgotten for the moment was the mare's nest of trouble that had postponed the flight for two days. Fuel cells running low on fuel, liquid hydrogen boiling uselessly away, telemetering equipment turned suddenly unreliable, fire near the launch pad, thunderstorms aloft−all seemed problems of the past. Now everything was going well; Gemini's orbit was incredibly exact. "Everything is fine," reported Command Pilot Gordon Cooper. "You are go! You are go!" exulted Astronaut Jim McDivitt, capsule communicator in the Mission Control Center near Houston...
...Conrad made a calm, almost routine report. The pressure, he said, was dropping in the fuel cells' oxygen supply. The gauge that normally should have read 800 to 900 Ibs. per sq. in. was dropping fast. Since the fuel cells were the main source of power for the spacecraft's communications, computer and environment control system, they were, in effect, the heart of the Gemini mission...
...cell's hydrogen and oxygen are both stored in spherical tanks in a supercold liquid state. Warmed by electric heaters, they turn to gas, build up pressure and push themselves into the cells. And those heaters are among the least complicated devices on the spacecraft: a filament of gold-plated wire curving around the tank. The same type of device is a veteran of all the manned Mer cury and Gemini flights, being used to convert liquid oxygen into gas for the astronauts to breathe. When oxygen pressure started falling in Gemini 5, it was a sure sign that...
...Missile Industry." But as it separated from its Atlas booster and ignited in a burst of pale blue flame high above the Atlantic Ocean last week, Centaur took on its proper dignity. The most powerful rocket of its size in the world, built to fire a one-ton Surveyor spacecraft to the moon, the 48-ft. Centaur shoved a dum my Surveyor into a perfect flight toward a preselected point in space, 240,000 miles from earth...
...good geographical reason for the decision. U.S. spaceships are over water as soon as they take off from Cape Kennedy; they must be equipped for emergency water landings anyway. To add parasail equipment would take up valuable weight and space. Russian engineers, on the other hand, launch their spacecraft over broad stretches of land; thus they have concentrated on ground landings. Besides, the Soviet sense of secrecy makes them want to bring down their capsules on Soviet soil, not international waters...