Word: capes
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Amid the deepest gloom since three Apollo astronauts died in a gruesome launch-pad fire at the cape in 1967, the U.S. space program has been forced into a long-needed reassessment of its goals and the means to reach them. Not since President John F. Kennedy insisted, just 25 years ago last month, that America should place astronauts on the moon within ten years have national leaders concurred on what the U.S. should be doing in space. "That was the last presidential policy for space," contends former NASA Administrator Thomas Paine, who now chairs a Reagan-appointed National Commission...
...threatening to burn through the seal. NASA did ask its booster contractor, Morton Thiokol, to seek a solution. Thiokol set up a seal task force at its plant in Utah. This work received more attention after a shuttle was launched on Jan. 24, 1985, following the coldest overnight cape temperature of any flight to date: in the 20s. This launch produced the most extensive ring damage. Morton Thiokol concluded in a postflight summary that "low temperature enhanced probability" of seal erosion. After testing the resiliency of the rings at various temperatures, the company told NASA on Aug. 9, 1985, that...
...history was completely dismissed on the eve of Challenger's launch. The seals had long been flagged as a problem that could be aggravated by low temperatures. Yet George Hardy, Marshall's deputy director of science and engineering, declared that he was "appalled" by Thiokol's reasoning that the cape's cold weather, predicted to be in the 30s at lift-off, should lead to a delay. In the now notorious teleconference, four Thiokol vice presidents at first concurred with the fears of their engineers. But when they heard the NASA objections, they decided to take a "management" vote...
Challenger had blasted off even though the temperature at the cape was 38 degrees . During the night, a subfreezing cold had chilled the shuttle, and surface winds of 30 m.p.h.. had aggravated the problem. Chunks of ice floated in water tanks laced with antifreeze. Once aloft on its tragic 73-sec. flight, Challenger was assailed by 75-m.p.h. gales, producing, even before the explosion, what one NASA engineer called "an extremely rough ride, maybe the roughest yet." At sea, ships assigned to recover the $25 million boosters were heading for safe harbors as waves broke over their gunwales...
Bulldozers last week razed the charred ruins at Crossroads, a black squatter camp five miles southeast of Cape Town, where fierce fighting between radical youths and conservative vigilante groups left at least 36 dead and more than 30,000 homeless. At the same time, the South African government was debating new measures to grant security forces sweeping powers to control the turbulence that has wracked the country for the past 21 months. Critics charge that the proposals, which would allow police to detain people for up to 180 days without trial, will reinforce the apartheid system and virtually reinstitute...