Word: titan
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...fuel, supplies or parts to a disabled ship. The Agena could even lock onto the crippled vehicle, enabling it to use the Agena's control and propulsion systems to return to earth. M.I.T. students have drawn up plans for a fleet of lifting-body rescue craft mounted on Titan 3C rockets and standing ready on launching pads-like a space-age version of the Coast Guard-to rendezvous with distressed spacecraft...
Ground-based rescue systems have serious drawbacks. The House space-rescue report estimates that the minimum time required to launch a Titan 3 rocket and rendezvous its rescue vehicle with a low-orbiting spacecraft is four hours. In addition, the orbiting, disabled ship would pass near Cape Kennedy only two or three times per day. Should a countdown be delayed long enough for the "rendezvous window" to close, the rescue ship would have to delay its flight for hours. Thus, unless the astronauts were well supplied with oxygen and in no immediate danger, the rescuers might arrive too late. NASA...
Astronomers estimate that the new moon orbits Saturn once every 18 hours and is between 100 and 200 miles in diameter. It is thus slightly larger than Saturn's smallest moon (Phoebe) but dwarfed by the largest (Titan), which is 2,900 miles in diameter-nearly as large as the planet Mercury. Despite the diminutive size of the new satellite, its gravity is probably strong enough to cause significant perturbations in the orbits of the countless tiny particles that constitute the nearby Saturnian rings. Thus, in conjunction with the gravitational pull of some of the other inner Saturnian moons...
...decade, the U.S. and the Soviet Union have maintained a nuclear balance of terror. Today the Russians possess approximately 400 intercontinental missiles, 125 submarine-launched missiles and 700 medium-range missiles targeted on Western Europe. The U.S. has 940 Minuteman ICBMs, which can take off in 32 seconds, 54 Titan II missiles, which carry considerably more megatonnage than the smaller Minuteman, and 608 sub-borne Polarises-1,602 birds in all. With additions already under way, the flock will soon total 1,720 and pack a combined wallop equal to 1.8 billion tons of TNT, more than half...
Missing the Eclipse. After two successive 24-hour postponements caused by malfunctions in their Titan rocket's guidance system, Astronauts Lovell and Aldrin finally soared into orbit in Gemini 12. Using an optical tracking device in place of the faulty radar, they successfully rendezvoused and docked during their third orbit with an Agena target vehicle that had been fired aloft 99 minutes before Gemini...