Word: commandant
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...apparent precision, there were glitches?those unexpected bugs that seem to plague the 15 million-part Apollos on all space voyages. The astronauts were just about to settle down for a leisurely coast to the moon when suddenly a yellow light flashed on, signaling that the command ship's main rocket, the 20,500-lb. service propulsion engine, had been switched on. Immediately there was fear that the moon landing would have to be aborted, but the experts in Houston soon diagnosed the problem as a faulty switch...
...from the moon's surface. Because of the nagging time lags, Fendell could not afford to look at the TV monitor himself. He had to go completely by the clock. At exactly T-minus-zero, Fendell had to begin tilting the camera upward. Thus, by the time his command reached the moon, the camera would-he hoped-follow Falcon's ascent stage until it drifted off the tube. Then, in order to bring it back into sight, Fendell would have to press an-other button precisely two seconds after liftoff, ordering the camera to pull back...
...final preparations were made for the dangerous journey, hundreds of thousands of tourists thronged the Cape Kennedy area. The great crowds were reminiscent of those that watched the lift-off of the first moon-landing expedition just over two years ago. Isolated in their crew area, Scott, Irwin and Command-Module Pilot Al Worden practiced maneuvers on Apollo flight simulators, underwent extensive medical examinations, took spins in a terrestrial version of their moon rover and reviewed the myriad details of their lengthy flight plans in the final hours of the countdown. Even the Russians helped. In response to NASA...
...Scott will park the rover 300 ft. from Falcon and 31 hrs. later, at 1:09 p.m., the car's camera should give the world its first live view of a spacecraft blasting off from the moon. By 3:04 p.m., Scott and Irwin should dock with the command module Endeavour (named for the ship used by 18th century English Navigator and Explorer James Cook). That will also reunite them with Worden, who will have conducted more scientific experiments than any other command-module pilot during his three days alone in lunar orbit...
MAJOR ALFRED M. WORDEN, 39, the Command-module pilot, is the crew's freest spirit. He likes good food and drink, plays his baby grand piano for visitors to his bachelor flat (everything from Beethoven to bop) and sleeps in a bed topped with a canopy of aluminum reflectors. "It gets me up in the morning," Worden explains. "I can't stand looking at all those ugly faces." Born in Jackson, Mich., Worden graduated from West Point in 1955, switched to the Air Force and later took a master's degree in astronautical and aeronautical engineering...