Word: translunar
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...three-day translunar trip was unremarkable - as unremarkable as man's first journey to the moon could be. There were two broadcasts back to Earth - the usual all-is-well waving-to-the-camera fare. News reports were read to the crew by Houston: Eleven GI's were released in Cambodia; Julie Nixon and David Eisenhower were married in New York; the Cleveland Browns beat the Dallas Cowboys 31 to 20 on Sunday and the Minnesota Vikings would be playing the Baltimore Colts on Monday. Lovell picked Baltimore...
...Jack Swigert, command-module pilot of Apollo 13 (a mission that taught NASA a thing or two about adventure), noted that the very thing that qualified lunar astronauts to fly the missions they were flying disqualified them from experiencing them fully. Can you fathom the utter, hostile emptiness of translunar space and still retain the calm to fly your spacecraft blithely through...
Early in the mission, Astronaut Ron Evans made his most notable photographic contribution; he took a picture that will rank among the classics of the space program. As Apollo sped toward the moon after blasting into its translunar trajectory, he pointed his camera back toward home and caught a stunning view of the earth, with the side visible to the astronauts completely illuminated. In crystal-clear detail it shows almost the entire coastline of Africa and the offshore island republic of Malagasy, the Arabian peninsula and an unusually thick cover of swirling clouds over Antarctica and the surrounding region...
Behind them are the flight director and planning and operations officers. "Flight" is the captain of the team, the man who makes the crucial decisions. Head flight for Apollo 11 was Cliff Charlesworth, 37. His green team handled liftoff, translunar insertion and the moon walk, known in space jargon as "Extravehicular Activity," or EVA. Charlesworth admits he liked EVA least of all the mission's activities, "because there just wasn't much I could do." Other flight directors for Apollo 11 were Gene Kranz, 35, who wears a white vest to match his team's color; Milt...
Less than twelve minutes after liftoff, a brief boost from the S-4B third stage placed Apollo into a circular 119-mile orbit at a velocity of 17,427 m.p.h. Over the Pacific for the second time, just 2½ hrs. after launch, the spacecraft was cleared by Houston for "translunar insertion" (TLI). Firing for five minutes, the reliable S-4B engine accelerated the ship to 24,245 m.p.h., fast enough to tear it loose from the earth's gravitational embrace and send it toward the moon. At a point 43,495 miles from the moon, lunar gravity exerted a force...