Word: centaur
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...lead in Michael Patrick Hearn's The Porcelain Cat (Little, Brown; $12.95). A medieval sorcerer wants to bring a feline statue to life. For that he needs an ingredient not sold in stores: basilisk blood. Out goes his assistant, a boy destined to encounter a witch and a centaur before he brings about the ironic ending. Hearn has obviously been spending time with the Greek myths, but his narrative is modernized with paintings by Leo and Diane Dillon, who know a few enchantments of their...
When the shuttle Challenger exploded off Florida 19 months ago, U.S. space policy also went up in smoke. A series of unsuccessful launchings, including the loss of an Atlas-Centaur rocket fired into a lightning storm last March, has further devastated the space program and left it floundering. In a 63-page report prepared for NASA and released last week, Astronaut Sally Ride attempts to set the agency back on track. She argues for an "evolutionary" policy with diverse objectives, rather than a splashy, one-goal venture. Writes Ride, who was the first American woman in space: "It would...
...Atlas-Centaur rockets have been launching U.S. satellites into orbit for the past 25 years, but last week the sturdy workhorse suffered a rare failure. Less than a minute after lift-off from Pad 36B at Cape Canaveral in threatening weather, a $78 million, 137-ft. rocket disappeared into rain- swollen thunderheads and went out of control. A range safety officer hit the destruct button, and the rocket exploded along with its payload, an $83 million communications satellite. For NASA, struggling to recover from the loss of the Challenger shuttle 14 months ago, the aborted flight broke a string...
...Failure," said Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, 42, last week, "is part of any mission of this magnitude." Gandhi was comforting India's space scientists after the country's newest rocket ended its maiden flight in a watery crash, a fate that also befell an American Atlas-Centaur rocket later in the week. But Gandhi could easily have been speaking of even more unhappy news that reached him the same day. In two of three state elections, his Congress (I) Party had suffered major setbacks at the hands of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), the strongest of the country...
...their arguments, the sages of Foggy Bottom created a bogeyman fierce enough to frighten America into a war in Viet Nam that the Wise Men came to believe was unnecessary. Acheson was especially acerbic about the turn of events in Southeast Asia. His impression of Lyndon Johnson: "A real centaur -- part man, part horse's ass." Astute political history has rarely been this engaging and engrossing...