Word: crafted
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Venus route would also cause the craft to re-enter the earth's atmosphere at 80,000 m.p.h., in contrast to the returning Apollo's 25,000 m.p.h. "We're not sure we know how to build the appropriate heat shields," says Oberg. Also, at that speed, the astronauts would have a much smaller "window" for re-entering the atmosphere. "Come in too low, and you burn up," says Oberg. "Come in too high, and you overshoot. You miss the earth, and you'll never see it again." Other plans call for an unmanned cargo ship to precede the manned...
...lucky ones, able to react quickly; most of those who were sleeping or relaxing in their cabins had no chance at all. Rigger Tony Sinnett, 34, watched in horror from a rescue craft after his escape. "It was as if the platform had been hit by an atom bomb," he said. He recalled seeing * half a dozen men on the platform's helicopter deck "who seemed to be waving. But then the deck keeled over, and the men disappeared...
Even given the identification of the mystery plane as an F-14, there is some dispute as to whether an unmodified version of the craft would be capable of doing much damage to the Vincennes. The planes, built in the U.S. and sold to Iran in the 1970s during the reign of the Shah, are designed to fight other aircraft and are ordinarily equipped only with air-to-air, not ship-killing, missiles. The Pentagon retorts that Iran is known to have Harpoon antiship missiles and could have fired them; other experts doubt it. In any case, say some pilots...
...solution, many scientists believe, is to impart artificial gravity -- in the form of centrifugal force -- to the spacecraft. This might be accomplished by spinning a very large craft around its own axis. Other schemes envision three ships hooked together in a cartwheel-like arrangement that makes three revolutions per minute, or two vehicles attached by a half-mile-long tether rotating through space as the entire system speeds toward Mars. Still another idea is to schedule a daily workout for each crew member inside an on-board centrifuge, where resisting the centrifugal force would simulate working in gravity...
Apollo 11 Astronaut Michael Collins foresees some technical difficulties in such simulation. "Spinning wouldn't take that much power," he says. "But it still complicates things immeasurably from an engineering point of view." He notes that imparting spin to a Mars-bound craft could make both navigation and communication more difficult...