Word: asphalting
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Millions of Particles. The Moscow area has been ringed for the past four years by about 45 anti-missile rocket sites. But the latest test suggests that the Russians have now developed an ABM that employs the so-called asphalt-cloud concept. It could be installed before the U.S. has put any missile defenses of its own into operation...
...ABMs, including the proposed U.S. Safeguard system, work essentially the same way. High-speed rockets, usually nuclear-tipped, are exploded high above the atmosphere to damage or destroy incoming ICBMs. In the asphalt-cloud technique, the ABM disperses millions of particles in the path of enemy missiles. When the rockets plunge into the atmosphere, the highly combustible bits of asphalt that they have picked up ignite from frictional heat; the asphalt burns so rapidly and creates such great temperatures that the heat shields on the ICBMs are all but consumed. Then the missiles either burn up or are so deformed...
...less beautiful than the embroidery of trees and sky. One finds infinite variations on green, changing by moments with the movement of the sun across the sky, far more sensible than finite, variations on truth or social reality that seem so convincing amidst a bankrupt landscape of buildings and asphalt...
Perhaps one is simply nearer to functional reality away from the city, and that is what is so nice. So that if one might always walk around with blueprints documenting all the systems under city asphalt: water pipes leading to fire hydrants and toilets and bathtubs, and gas mains going to stoves, and electric and telephone lines to everywhere, and subway, tunnels taking people places, with purposes, city life might be a thrilling adventure. Or as I have hoped, if I could really understand just how electricity works, really understand about electrons and shared bonds and all that... in other...
Sixteen thousand tourists made the 14-minute tour of the birthplace during June. Most of them were Texans, although out-of-state license tags dot the asphalt parking lot. They come to see some history on "a ten-minute stop off the road," and politics are unimportant to a father motioning his kids closer to the historical marker while he peers into the range finder of a camera. "You don't have to be an L.B.J. fan to come here," an Oklahoman explains...