The Rosy Glow, cruising through deep space, slowly approached the silvery-white "port."
Then, a pair of elongated "landing gear" slowly extended from beneath the Rosy Glow's nose, pointing toward the module with an interface at the bottom end of the space station. They then gradually moved closer.
Sitting in the passenger cabin and watching the space station draw nearer beyond the porthole, Jason's heart practically rose to his throat. Sweat seeped into his tense palms.
Spacecraft docking had always been one of the most difficult aspects of aerospace technology.
It tested not only a nation's "hard power," such as the precision of its industrial cameras, the strength of spacecraft materials, engines, and their control systems, but also a whole series of software capabilities, including computer vision measurement technology.
The requirements for the spacecraft's orbital altitude and velocity were especially brutal. The engine ignition window was often compressed to within a single second; one second too early or too late would result in docking failure.
Back when the United States' Gemini Manned Space Program had first begun, it took nearly a year before Gemini 6 and 7 achieved rendezvous. Yet after maintaining a distance of thirty centimeters for twenty minutes, the two spacecraft still failed to dock. It was not until Gemini 8 successfully docked with an unmanned target spacecraft the following year that the United States truly mastered the technology.
As for crewed spacecraft docking, it was not achieved until the mid-seventies, when the United States and the Soviet Union "shook hands and made peace" in the aerospace field and finally accomplished it through the joint efforts of the two superpowers.
The main reason the Apollo Program had not chosen to launch the lunar landing components separately, rendezvous in high orbit, and then head for the Moon was that docking