Word: splashdown
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Apollo Flight Director Gene Kranz disclaims any superstition, yet regularly dons a white vest during launches, a red vest during long flights, and a flashy gold-brocaded vest immediately after a safe splashdown. At California's Hughes Aircraft Co., any unmanned space probe, like Surveyor, is accompanied in the control room by more crossed fingers, arms and legs than a contortionists' convention. Most space scientists believe in Murphy's Law: "If something can go wrong, it will go wrong, and at the worst possible time." Is there really a Professor Murphy? Answers one California scientist: "Sure, just...
...Roaring up from darkness into the Florida dawn, the missile was illuminated by the rays of the rising sun. Leaving a psychedelic trail of ionized gases, it streaked away. Barely 10 minutes had elapsed after lift-off when it was announced that Poseidon had sped to a perfect splashdown, 1,150 miles away down the Atlantic missile range. Then came the taller, three-stage Minuteman III. Launched at 4:30 p.m. in a geyser of orange flame, it raced 5,000 miles to another brilliant on-target splashdown near Ascension Island in the South Atlantic...
...Armstrong needed no prompting. He had already yanked the ejection ring and he parachuted to safety as the $2,100,000 craft dived straight into the ground. It was Armstrong's second close call. Two years ago he coolly jockeyed a malfunctioning Gemini 8 spacecraft to an emergency splashdown in the Pacific...
Grissom served as the little-known backup man for Shepard's historic Project Mercury flight. Five weeks later, Gus roared out of obscurity aboard Liberty Bell 7 as the second American in space. His 118-mile-high suborbital flight was a success, but the splashdown in the Atlantic ended in near-disaster when the capsule hatch inexplicably blew off, swamping Grissom inside. Gus swam from the sinking craft and was rescued by helicopter. Though he was in no way to blame for the mishap, he inevitably became known to the public as the astronaut who lost his capsule...
Swaying under a marigold-and-white parachute, and clearly visible on millions of television screens, Gemini 12 splashed into the Sargasso Sea last week, bringing Astronauts James Lovell and Edwin Aldrin safely back from their successful four-day trip in space. The splashdown marked the triumphant end of NASA's remarkably fruitful Gemini program. Since March 1965, the Gemini astronauts have made ten manned flights, rendezvoused ten times with target vehicles, docked nine times, and set a host of other space records. They have also proved that man can fly as safely in spacecraft as in airplanes, and that...