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Episodes Tagged with "President Kennedy"

Posted on July 27, 2016

Even a perfect reentry would subject the Apollo 8 command module to extreme stress.  With Gemini, the capsule re-entered from Earth orbit, but Apollo 8 would re-enter at approximated 25,000 miles per hour.  The forces of heat and deceleration would b...

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Posted on July 20, 2016

Bill Anders: “We are now approaching lunar sunrise, and for all the people back on Earth, the crew of Apollo 8 has a message that we would like to send to you.” “‘In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. ‘And the earth was without fo...

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Posted on August 3, 2016

New York City welcomed the Apollo 8 crew with a ticker-tape parade on the 10th of January, Newark hailed them on the 11th, and Miami greeted them on the 12th during the Super Bowl game. The Astronauts returned to Houston on the 13th for a hometown pa...

TIME COVERS – THE 60S

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Posted on September 14, 2016

The biggest concern before Apollo 9 was the docking maneuver.  In early 1969, at NASA there was little confidence in the docking system. At a January program review, Phillips said that problems encountered during probe and drogue testing worried him…

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Posted on August 15, 2013

Over 52 years ago, in the early hours of May 5th, 1961 the US prepared to launch its first man into space. Three weeks earlier, the Soviet Union had sent Yuri Gagarin on an orbital mission. This was a suborbital mission planed to last only 15 minutes...

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Posted on October 31, 2013

During the summer of 1962 final preparations were underway for the first U.S. attempt to reach another planet.  The planet was Venus, Earth’s closest planetary neighbor.  This first flight would be accomplished by the JPL built Mariner 2 spacecraft…

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Posted on November 7, 2013

Mercury-Atlas 9 was the fourth and final manned orbital flight of the Mercury program. The flight objectives were to: (1) evaluate the effects on the astronaut of approximately one day in orbital flight; (2) verify that man can function for an exte...

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Posted on January 30, 2014

“The main trouble with the Mercury capsule was that most system components were in the pilot’s cabin; and often, to pack them in this very confined space, they had to be stacked like a layer cake and components of one system had to be scattered about...

The operating principle of the fuel cell designed by General Electric, adopted for use in the Gemini spacecraft

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Gemini spacecraft to be released publicly

Adapter Section of Mark II

Four stages in a rendezvous mission as conceived early in 1962

An artist’s version of the use of ejection seats to escape from the Gemini spacecraft

fig8 proposed lunar lander to be used with an advanced version of the Mercury spacecraft

Posted on June 24, 2015

Over 52 years ago, in the early hours of May 5th, 1961 the US prepared to launch its first man into space. Three weeks earlier, the Soviet Union had sent Yuri Gagarin on an orbital mission. This was a suborbital mission planed to last only 15 minutes...

Posted on September 24, 2015

Mercury-Redstone 4 was the fourth mission in the Mercury-Redstone series and the second U.S. manned suborbital spaceflight. The mission was essentially a repeat of Alan Shepard’s Freedom 7 flight.   So why was it necessary to launch another sub-orbit...