Word: alas
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...Army's Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Ala., came Wernher von Braun, 45, the exuberant Prussian who had fathered the German V-2 rockets. He had been among those who rushed into American hands when the Third Reich collapsed. Von Braun souped up his Redstone missile, put a tiny satellite dubbed Explorer on top and sent it into orbit. There was no turning back...
According to Senator Howell Heflin (D-Ala.), the Senate takes "a break whenever somebody has a fundraiser." With fundraising taking on such importance, special interest funds tend to distort the political system. PACs favor incumbents, with 72 percent of their contributions going to those already in office. This way, PACs can obtain more influence per dollar, wasting little on those who are not "safe" contenders for office. Unfortunately, with the average House seat costing $500,000 and a six-year lease on a chair in the Senate Chamber running its occupant around $3 million, challengers, receiving few PAC funds, cannot...
...woman has ever commanded a spacecraft, but Hollywood scriptwriters are known for flights of fancy. So in Spacecamp, filmed partly at the real-life U.S. Space Camp in Huntsville, Ala., the plot contrives to have Actress Kate Capshaw take off accidentally and become the first American woman to take charge of a space-shuttle mission. Capshaw, who traipsed dizzily in and out of the Temple of Doom with Indiana Jones, confesses that "before this movie, I was unaware of space except for in grade school." The actress has been coached on the set by no less an expert than Sally...
...Mississippi had seized for failure to pay taxes. The state considered the chemicals a fire hazard (rather than a contamination threat) and asked EPA to put the site near the top of its list. The agency merely had the drums hauled off to an approved landfill in Emelle, Ala. Problem solved. Similarly, about 700 drums of chemicals had been stored in a Cleveland warehouse used by Chemical Minerals Recovery Co. Another 700 were piled outside the building. None had sprung significant leaks. But EPA gave the site priority and had the drums carried to an EPA-licensed landfill in Geneva...
Collective fantasy play is fascinating. Four-year-olds display a genius for it, but their parents usually have trouble managing the suspension of disbelief. The adults flying the shuttle mission at the U.S. Space Camp in Huntsville, Ala., however, gave themselves up to an absorbing hallucination of adventure: Walter Mitty in zero gravity. Most of them fell into their roles with amazing and rather endearing conviction. They put on powder blue NASA flight suits and duck-billed hats with gold braid on them. They threw themselves into training. When it came time for their shuttle missions, they imitated precisely...