Description
“Rollin’ home, Rollin’ home, at the light of the silvery moon. I’ll be happy as a king, believe me, when I go Rollin’ home”: These are the words of an Ol’ English drinking ballad. We are Rollin’ back home, and we all feel like kings.
Except for a couple of lightning strikes during our launch, all has gone well. About 45 minutes ago, the service module engine again performed perfectly, increasing our speed 3,042 feet per second. This increased velocity moved us out of lunar orbit and sent us on the way back to our rendezvous point. Planet Earth was some three days from us now.
It sure felt good when our rocket engine fired. We could not hear any noise, but the thrust banged us back into our couches and held us there for the entire two minute and eleven second burn. I always felt our crew was so well trained that we could fly the mission as planned. The question that crept into my mind from time to time was, “will our spacecraft continue to perform as it has been designed to do, or would something break?” We were flying in the most complex machine which was ever built. I knew every vehicle, every machine, fails eventually, the question is, when?
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