Word: spaceship
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Branch Line. The LOR system will use different tactics. When the spaceship approaches the moon, it will burn a small amount of fuel in its retrorockets and nudge itself into an orbit about 100 miles above the lunar surface. Then, instead of descending, it will detach a small "bug" containing two of its three-man crew. The bug will have rocket engines, a communication system and a modest supply of fuel as well as "biological support" to keep the crew alive. After it separates from the orbiting spaceship, a brief burst from its engines will put it into an elliptical...
After exploring the nearby parts of the moon as thoroughly as their oxygen, supplies and equipment permit, the crew of the bug will blast off and rendezvous with the spaceship orbiting above them. After joining the two spacecraft and making everything shipshape, the reunited crew will boost themselves out of orbit and take off for the earth. The bug may be taken back to earth or abandoned on the lunar orbit...
...great advantage of LOR comes from weight-and fuel-saving at the moon end of the trip. A three-man spaceship capable of landing on the moon with enough fuel left to take off again and propel itself back to the earth, will have to weigh somewhere in the vicinity of 100,000 Ibs. The landing bug will be much smaller, probably weighing only 25,000 Ibs.. because it will not carry all the fuel, supplies and equipment for the full trip back to earth. Less fuel will be needed to land it on the moon and take...
...Their Own. Astronauts trying to rendezvous on a lunar orbit will be on their own. There will be no friendly stations on the moon's hostile surface, no computers to analyze the orbits of the waiting spaceship or of the bug that is trying to join it. Unless the two are close together, their crews will not be able to see each other or communicate by radio; the moon's surface curves so sharply that a few hundred miles of distance will put each of them below the other's horizon. Theoretically they can communicate by relaying...
Before attempting lunar orbital rendezvous, U.S. astronauts will have to make many practice steps. First will come rendezvous in earth orbit, the crewmen becoming proficient at bringing their satellite capsules together with help from the earth below. Then a spaceship will voyage to the moon, park itself for a while in orbit there and return to the earth. After that, a bug will leave the spaceship and make a practice rendezvous with it without trying to land. Only after this maneuver has been mastered by several successful trials will the first lonely bug attempt to land on the hostile moon...