Word: commanding
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...lightened spacecraft, setting it down in the South Atlantic in less than 40 hours. But that strategy too carried unnecessary risks. It would so deplete the LM's fuel supply that later course corrections might not be possible. Also, loss of the service module would expose the command module's heat shield to possibly damaging ultraviolet radiation and temperature extremes, leaving the astronauts with insufficient protection for reentry...
Inside the darkened spacecraft, the astronauts struggled to make the best of their dangerous predicament. While two slept fitfully in the unpowered and chilly command module, the third remained on watch "downstairs" in the lunar module. Ground controllers had at least one bit of cheering news. To the delight of scientists, the Saturn third-stage S-4B rocket (which itself had been aimed toward the moon after giving Apollo its final boost) had hit the lunar surface exactly as planned. Its impact created a reverberation that registered for four hours on the Apollo 12 Ocean of Storms seismometer. "Well...
...Houston soon noticed that carbon dioxide exhaled by the astronauts was building up to a dangerous level in the lunar module's atmosphere; lithium hydroxide air purifiers in Aquarius, designed to absorb the potentially lethal gas for only relatively short periods of time, were becoming saturated. The deactivated command module was equipped with more purifiers, but their canisters were not interchangeable with the LM's. Mission Control instructed the astronauts to lead a second hose into the command module and connect it to the canisters. Leaving nothing to chance, the astronauts stuffed a sock in the connection to make sure...
With its normal heat-producing systems shut off to conserve electricity, the Odyssey's temperature dropped to nearly 40°. Had it continued to fall, the command module's chemical propellants might have thickened to the point where control thrusters would no longer have been able to perform the critical re-entry maneuvers...
Picking up speed under the increasing pull of the earth's gravity, Apollo was now rapidly approaching its narrow re-entry slot. To make sure of a precise reentry, Lovell and Haise fired one more brief burst from Aquarius' thrusters. Swigert meanwhile took up his post in the command module pilot's seat. Looking out of the window, he commented: "That earth is whistling in like a high-speed train...