Word: commandant
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...human visitors to the lunar highlands. There they may be able to recover rocks dating back to the birth of the moon, more than 4.5 billion years ago. The lunar landing maneuvers will differ in important details from the two previous successful manned lunar expeditions. For one thing, the command ship Kitty Hawk will descend to within 11.5 miles of the moon's surface before releasing the lunar module. Cutting down on the customary 67-mile altitude will conserve some of the lander's limited fuel reserves for the riskier touchdown on the rugged terrain...
Zero Gravity. As he circles above in the command ship, Roosa will also have his hands full with scientific chores -taking closeup photos of the moon, aiming his cameras at more distant astronomical targets, including interstellar dust clouds, and bouncing radar beams off the lunar surface to further determine its characteristics. On their voyage home, the astronauts will subject a number of terrestrial substances to the effects of zero gravity, including organic chemicals that are used in making vaccines. Such tests, scientists hope, may eventually lead to the production of vaccines in earth-orbiting labs; weightless conditions should facilitate...
...design of Apollo's oxygen tanks, incorporating such safety features as stainless-steel-sheathed electrical wiring, heat regulators controlled by the astronauts, and external cutoff switches. In addition, NASA has added a third oxygen tank, a long-lived storage battery and extra water supplies as reserves for the command ship. Even Mission Control will profit from the $15 million safety overhaul. If any of Apollo 14's critical systems go awry, as did the defective oxygen tank in Apollo 13, loud beeping alarms will sound on the monitoring consoles in Houston as well as on the spacecraft...
...hurled by a Redstone rocket into a high, arcing 302-mile flight over the Atlantic. For the U.S., that brief, 15-min-ute suborbital ride began the era of manned space flight. Next week, his lean body practically unchanged by the passage of years, the same pioneering astronaut will command NASA's fourth manned assault on the moon. At the age of 47, Captain Alan B. Shepard Jr. is the oldest American* ever to soar into space, the only one of the original Mercury astronauts still on flight status and clearly one of the comeback heroes of all time...
Shepard should fit very well into Apollo 14's command seat. His ear now seems in excellent shape. "I still have a muted ringing in it, like a dog whistle," he says, "but I hardly notice it." He has also apparently mastered, in spite of initial difficulties, the split-second control techniques of the tricky lunar lander. Indeed, his confidence should help bolster all of NASA at a critical moment in its history. "I suppose," muses Shepard, "if we don't make it back to earth, somebody will say the poor son of a bitch wasn...