08-18-2018, 10:40 AM
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Master Modeler
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Join Date: Jan 2009
Location: Fairbanks, Alaska
Posts: 6,507
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1st Moonshot yesterday...
Hello All,
I would have posted this yesterday (when it occurred *60* years ago), but I just got my computer back after a long stint in the local repair shop:
On August 17, 1958, the first attempt to reach the Moon was made, when a Pioneer probe was launched from Cape Canaveral aboard a Thor-Able vehicle. This mission is often referred to as Pioneer 0 (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_0 ), because it failed just over a minute after liftoff when the Thor exploded due to a turbopump bearing failure. The next--and the most successful--of these three Thor-Able Pioneer lunar orbiter attempts, Pioneer 1, was undertaken by the infant NASA on October 11 of that year, and reached a record-breaking 70,712 mile distance from the Earth (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_1 ). Pioneer 2 only achieved an ICBM-like suborbital flight because the launch vehicle's third stage failed to ignite.
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