On Thu 07 Mar 2013 12:35:48 PM EST Bill Bard <wbard@wb-web.org> wrote: > The sentence itself doesn't say that which can cause confusion. "The next crew to launch toward the International Space Station will make the trip faster than any astronauts before them, thanks to a new docking plan being tested this month." I interpret "the trip" to mean the trip of a crew launched toward the ISS, and the statement is true. > I believe Gemini 8 is the first to do it in 1966 in 6.5 hours. I had > trouble finding any record of the USSR or Russians doing it previously > quicker than 1 day. Do you have any specifics? Since it says "launched toward" rather than "to", one could reasonably say it's talking about rendezvous rather than rendezvous and docking. If so, then Gemini 6's rendezvous with Gemini 7 predates Gemini 8's rendezvous and docking with its Agena target by about 3 months. If you mean a manned docking in less than one day, I can't find a Soviet example. The two automatic dockings of unmanned Soyuz spacecraft (flying under Kosmos names, Kosmos 186 & 188, and numbers 212 and 213) both took place on the first orbit of the second (target) spacecraft. The manned Soyuz 3 rendezvoused with the unmanned Soyuz 2 on Soyuz 3's first orbit, but failed to dock. All of the other docking flights (with crews) have taken one or two days. _______________________________________________ Seesat-l mailing list http://mailman.satobs.org/mailman/listinfo/seesat-l
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Mar 07 2013 - 18:37:07 UTC