Word: crafted
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...shuttle's launch. Although launch day dawned bright and sunny, meteorologists warned that the high-altitude winds in the shuttle's flight path, normally unruly in the Cape Canaveral region during late September, had uncharacteristically died down. The problem: Discovery's computers had been programmed to maneuver the craft through strong, buffeting winds. "Imagine yourself leaning way forward into a stiff wind," explained Thomas Utsman, director of shuttle management and operations. "But suddenly and unexpectedly, the wind stops, and you fall flat on your face...
...give the astronauts a chance to leave the orbiter quickly in the event of a "benign disaster" after the boosters had fallen away. In such a crisis, the crew would jettison the huge external fuel tank and stabilize the winged orbiter into a downward glide. Then, when the craft descended to an altitude of about 30,000 ft., the astronauts would set off explosive bolts, blowing a newly installed hatch off the ship, and extend the 12-ft. telescoping escape pole, which is positioned to guide them away from the orbiter's wing and tail. One by one, each would...
Others are just as vague. Should the station be a research and manufacturing facility for performing microgravity experiments and making substances not possible on earth? An assembly platform for the large craft needed to carry humans to Mars? A combination of both? In fact, a station is not needed for former astronaut Sally Ride's "Mission to Planet Earth," a proposal to study the earth's environment and atmosphere from satellites. And some argue that it may not even be needed for another major space project: a permanent manned base on the moon...
...week's end NASA's immediate job was clearly delineated: to complete Discovery's mission and bring it safely back to earth. Aboard the spacecraft, the astronauts attended to a few glitches, including a nagging problem in the craft's cooling system and a balky antenna on a communications instrument, which they managed to retract. They worked on science experiments, played tapes of classical and pop music and shot pictures of Pacific thunderstorms, of a lava flow in Ethiopia and of coastal erosion wreaked by Hurricane Gilbert in Yucatan...
There is not a cheap note or a careless image, not an easy judgment or a forced emotion, in the 2 hr. 43 min. of Bird. It permits a man's life its complexity. It invites us to experience the redeeming grace of his music. And with its passionate craft, it proclaims that Eastwood is a major American director...