Word: spacecrafts
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...Much Control. By his own time-consuming efforts to control his capsule, articulate Astronaut Carpenter learned valuable lessons about how to fly, and how not to fly, orbiting spacecraft. Such a ship moves on a predetermined orbit, and except for firing retrorockets for reentry, an astronaut cannot appreciably change its course or speed. If he applies no control at all, the capsule will go through a drifting motion, rolling and tumbling slowly as it circles the earth...
...Future spacecraft designed to cruise to the moon or Mars will have even more complicated control systems, on-course propulsion that can be turned on and off, and telescopes to track the earth, the sun and the target. If they intend to rendezvous with other spacecraft, they will probably carry radars for judging distances and intricate devices to bring the two ships together. But when their assured, experienced captains guide them into the velvet blackness, they will be using manuals based on the flights-and the mistakes-of such early pioneers as Glenn and Carpenter...
...Ranger hit the far side of the moon, but its flight was far from an unqualified success. Soon after takeoff, something went wrong with the computer that was supposed to control the missile's many instruments and trans mit the data back to earth. As a result, the spacecraft's velocity could not be slowed before it hit the moon. The scientists got no television pictures of the moon as planned; they could count no ' meteorites nor could their carefully packed moonquake meter land in working order. Discouraged, one National Aeronautics and Space Administration official lamented...
...thin layer of gas that keeps the metals from actually touching. National Research scientists were interested in what happens when metals touch in the hard vacuum high above the earth's atmosphere. In their space simulation chamber they created an almost perfect vacuum (10 torr-), the same as spacecraft encounter 500 miles above the earth. In that ultra emptiness, surface gases evaporated; oxide films, once cleaned off, did not return...
...long lead in the space race, Old Pilot McDonnell is betting his bluest chips on planes, which still account for two-thirds of his sales. Says he: "There will be manned aircraft so long as there's air, just as there will be manned spacecraft so long as there's space...