Word: aloftness
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...valuable war trophies carried home by the U.S., he headed the team that developed the Jupiter C rocket that put the U.S. into the space race by launching the Explorer 1 satellite in 1958. His team pioneered the development of the Redstone, which carried America's first astronaut aloft in 1961. Most important, he designed and developed the huge Saturn 5 rocket, which opened a new era of space exploration in 1969 when it carried the Apollo 11 astronauts to the surface of the moon. "Wernher von Braun's name was inextricably linked to our exploration of space...
...dark bay. Jockey Jean Cruguet tapped him twice with an uncocked whip in the stretch, looked for contenders over first one shoulder, then the other and, 20 yards from the finish, stood up in the saddle. He went past the wire with his whip held triumphantly aloft...
...Every historical change," wrote Anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski, "creates its mythology." Lindbergh was the mythic hero of early aviation. In 1927 flying shone with the innocence of its newness and possibility, with the untrammeled zest of lifting off from the earth. Aloft, wrote Lindbergh, "I live only in the moment in this strange, unmortal space, crowded with beauty, pierced with danger." He was a sky lover; his was a rare moment: personal confidence and skill in partnership with a machine, not overwhelmed by it, as would happen later...
...rocket, man dreamed of hoisting sail and traveling through space in wind-blown ships. In The True History, a tale written in the 2nd century A.D. by the satirist and onetime lawyer, Lucian of Samosata, a ship with a 50-man crew is caught in an Atlantic storm, carried aloft and sent, sail billowing, on a journey to the moon. Later storytellers launched ships with sails on even more fanciful space trips. But none of these fictional voyages was as remarkable as the mission now being planned for NASA by scientists at Pasadena's Jet Propulsion Laboratory...
Still, the huge sailer poses a problem. The sail must be carried aloft furled (folded, it will fit into a package of only one cubic meter) and the framework assembled far beyond the atmosphere. Luckily, NASA is readying a suitable ferry: the space shuttle. Capable of carrying the sail and framework in its large equipment bay, the shuttle should be in regular use by the proposed launch date for the sailing ship: January...