Word: thagard
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...flight was Gemini and Apollo veteran John Young, widely respected as an iceman at the stick. If you're going to fly so tricky a ship, you have to be. "When you re-enter, you're moving at 25 times the speed of sound," says former astronaut Dr. Norm Thagard. Hitting the atmosphere at that velocity is "not unlike slamming into a brick wall, if you're not at the correct attitude...
...brick with wings, as the engineers have often called the ship, has a very fine margin of error. Lose your purchase on the air and go into a spin, and there's almost no way to pull out of it. "The attitude needs to be very, very precise," says Thagard. "You can pick up heat so fast you get a breakup...