Word: spacecraft
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...recovery team opened the hatch, tossed in the bulky Biological Isolation Garments (BIGs) and then helped the astronauts out of their spacecraft. On a rubber life raft the astronauts scrubbed down with Betadine, an iodine-based disinfectant. Hoisted by helicopter aboard the Hornet, the astronauts were soon settled in comfortable isolation inside a biologically "clean" van to begin 18 days of quarantine...
EVEN before the Apollo 11 astronauts were flown to Houston, a cargo nearly as precious was rushed to the Manned Spacecraft Center. Transported separately so that the whole shipment could not be lost in a single accident, two boxes containing some 60 lbs. of lunar soil and rocks were flown off the U.S.S. Hornet in two helicopters and taken to Johnston Island. From there, they were airlifted aboard two planes directly to Houston, then trucked to the Lunar Receiving Lab (LRL). The space agency gave the rocks such VIP treatment that NASA Administrator Thomas Paine, Robert Gilruth, director...
...Columbus Kraft, flight operations director for the Apollo missions. "I don't write the music, I just make sure it comes out right." Chris Kraft's unlikely podium is the windowless Mission Operations Control Room on the third floor of Building 30 at NASA's Manned Spacecraft Center near Houston. His musicians are the 30 controllers who sit at four rows of gray computer consoles, monitoring some 1,500 constantly changing items of information registered on gauges, dials and meters. Kraft's primary instrument is a pair of IBM 360 Model 75 computers with a total...
...they report on booster systems, retrofire, flight dynamics and guidance-respectively known in the control room's jargon as "Booster," "Retro," "Fido" and "Guide." Working in concert, they are responsible for propellant tanks, for calculating the exact moment of retrorocket firings, computing maneuver times and keeping track of spacecraft computers and guidance systems...
...second row are the flight surgeon (whose shorthand designation is "Surgeon," never "Doc"), and the spacecraft communicator, or "Capcom." White dots sliding across the surgeon's console screen indicate heart and respiration rate's of the astronauts. Capcom, always an astronaut himself, handles all communication with the crew, giving the men who are deep in space a direct link with one of their own. Only in emergencies does anyone else take the microphone. There were none with Apollo...