Word: spaceships
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...earth-moon trip. The two payloads will rendezvous on orbit and prepare for departure for the moon. If preliminary tests make this system look too difficult. Webb proposes to fall back on direct ascent, using a giant Nova booster with 12 million Ibs. of thrust to toss a manned spaceship to the moon without the complication of orbital rendezvous. In either case, the spaceship will land on the moon after braking its descent with retrorockets. then take off for the earth from the moon's surface, perhaps parking briefly in a lunar orbit before starting the long voyage home...
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...
...space travelers still seem to think they are primarily airplane drivers. Like Colonel John Glenn before him, Commander Scott Carpenter soared into orbit with remarkably little faith in his capsule's automatic positioning equipment. He spent all but a few minutes of his five hours aloft "flying" his spaceship by hand, changing its attitude while in orbit with squirts of peroxide steam, at one point using two systems at once. As a result, he all but ran out of fuel, almost fouled up the delicate business of re-entry into the earth's atmosphere (TIME, June 1). Even...