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1 The Apollo Experience
Pages 1-7

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From page 1...
... As Cernan began climbing back into the capsule, command pilot Thomas Stafford had to hold onto his partner's legs and feared that he could not get him back inside. "We could have lost him and even myself," Stafford told the attendees of the 2019 annual meeting of the National Academy of Engineering.
From page 2...
... After consulting with NASA administrator James Webb, NASA engineers Robert Gilruth and Maxime Faget, rocket pioneer Wernher von Braun, and others, Johnson told Kennedy that the Soviet Union had a significant lead in being able to fly a spacecraft around the Moon and back to Earth. He also said that the United States had even chances of beating the Soviets to orbiting the Moon.
From page 3...
... The original mission was for Stafford and Schirra to dock with an uncrewed Agena target vehicle launched by an Atlas rocket. However, as the two astronauts waited in the Gemini "You can fly formation at 17,400 capsule for the target vehicle to miles per hour.
From page 4...
... The main thing is to get there." Meanwhile, the Soviet program to send men around the Moon and back to Earth was experiencing severe setbacks. In one unmanned mission, a rocket exploded a few hundred feet off the launch pad, producing one of the largest nonnuclear explosions in the world -- perhaps a fourth the size of the Hiroshima atomic bomb explosion, Stafford said.
From page 5...
... From the distance of the Moon, the Earth is about the size of an orange. "And with color TV, people here on the Earth saw it within a second and a half after we saw it." As the three astronauts were taking the first color television images of the Earth from space, Stafford suggested to ground control that they call the British Flat Earth Society in London and tell its members that "you can see on live color TV that the Earth is round." The next day the president of the society sent a message back to Stafford: "Yes, the Earth is round, but it's a flat disk." Two weeks after Apollo 10 returned to Earth, Stafford got a call from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences in New York saying that he had been awarded an Emmy for his space telecasts.
From page 6...
... "When you mix acid and water, you always pour acid into water. You do not pour water into acid, because you have some bad results." During the Apollo 13 mission, a carbon-containing combustible material was in a tank that also contained liquid oxygen.
From page 7...
... "Get excited about your space program and Mars," he said, "because we're going."


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