Word: hatched
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...forward pilot's compartment and a separately pressured divers' compartment that enables it to discharge and pick up divers far below the water's surface. When pressure in the divers' compartment has been built up to equal the water pressure outside, a hatch drops open, enabling the divers to depart. When they come back, they can eat and rest in the still-pressurized compartment and then return to work in the watery depths without ever having to undergo a time-consuming decompression process...
...Westinghouse's Cachalot consists of a pressurized "dormitory" and a diving bell that is lowered from the side of a barge to as far as 600 ft. below the surface, carrying divers in a pressurized chamber. Under water, the divers can emerge through a bottom hatch, work outside from two to six hours, then return to the diving chamber. Still pressurized, the bell is hoisted back on deck. There it is attached to the roomier dormitory, where the divers can eat and sleep, still under pressure, before returning to the depths. Using this system, Cachalot divers can work steadily...
Plastic tunnels. To guard against moon viruses and bacteria, NASA will not allow the astronauts to open the Apollo hatch until a plastic tunnel has been extended to the spacecraft from a 35-ft., hermetically sealed van placed near by on the carrier deck. Carrying 50 Ibs. of lunar rock and soil samples in steel vacuum cases, they will walk through the tunnel into the van. There, in the company of a doctor and an engineer, they will be completely isolated from the outside world. When the carrier reaches a U.S. port, the van will be flown intact...
Critical Changes. Strapped into the conical command module, trapped by hatches impossible to open, Virgil Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chaffee scarcely had a chance. Now Apollo has only one hatch, and it can be opened with a ratchet from inside in about five seconds. The mechanism of the new, 70-lb. hatch, which Low says can be opened "with your little finger," is assisted by a cylinder of compressed nitrogen gas. Better for escape during ground tests, the quick-opening hatch also provides easier exit and re-entry during operations outside the spacecraft in flight. Moreover, it assures astronauts...
While the hatch problem was being solved, NASA and North American Aviation engineers went to work on combustible materials that had cluttered Apollo's spacecraft before the January fire. Aluminum plumbing which melted at 1080° F. has been replaced by stainless steel. Brazed joints that withstand temperatures approaching 1,600° F. have been substituted for soldered joints that melt at 360° F. Coolant pipelines, which service electronic components and can release flammable glycol when ruptured, have been "armor-plated" at joints with high-strength epoxy. Should the joints come open, the epoxy serves as a back...