Word: boosterism
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...satellite in distress is Intelsat-6, designed to carry international telephone traffic. It was launched in 1990 but was stranded 345 miles up -- about 22,000 miles short of its assigned orbit. The astronauts will pull the 4.5-ton satellite into the shuttle's cargo bay, strap a booster rocket onto it and send it on its way. Then four of them will suit up and go outside to try out construction techniques that will be used on the U.S. space station, Freedom, scheduled to be built by the late 1990s. They will also test the "astrorope," a device astronauts...
Last February the FDA rejected as premature applications by vitamin makers to promote folic acid as a means of preventing neural-tube birth defects, antioxidants as a hedge against cancer, and zinc as a booster of aging immune systems. Both federal and state regulatory agencies have been cracking down on nutrient health claims. The FDA says it will hold label claims to standards similar to those applied to drugs. Advises Dr. Walter Willett of the Harvard School of Public Health: "At this time I say don't take megadoses, but I'm not ruling out that in two or three...
Open-mike readings, at which anyone can get up and perform, are another popular audience booster in the clubs. Social issues, sexual and racial politics, and the general crassness of American culture are popular topics. "In the Persian Gulf bodies rained,/ Arab jets all worked in vain,/ The modern world is at the flood," declaims Joe Roarty at Chicago's Cafe Voltaire. Earnestness and energy also count for a lot. Donna Wozinsky, 36, a spunky special-education teacher from Queens, whose verse tends toward the excruciatingly personal ("I, the sperm bank of your soul . . .") attends at least three open-mike...
...Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy, the Peace Prize was the first major morale booster in more than a year. Although she was already under house arrest at the time, her party won a landslide victory in the May 1990 parliamentary elections, taking 392 of the 485 seats. But the generals refused to surrender power. Instead they arrested scores of elected parliamentarians and hundreds of Buddhist monks...
...come up with a startling idea on how to beat nuclear swords into plowshares while earning some desperately needed hard currency. Commerce Department officials say a Soviet firm called NPO Energiya wants to convert nuclear-missile-bearing submarines into floating launching pads for satellites. The company, which developed booster rockets for the Soviet space shuttle, explains that once the warheads are removed, the sub-borne ballistic missiles can be used to carry commercial payloads into space. On the other hand, will all those unemployed Soviet nuclear experts be put to peaceful use? Despots may be yearning for their advice. Arms...