Word: defectiveness
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...perched proudly on its Florida pad, pointing skyward like an anxious eagle. Last week NASA officials gloomily conceded that their $1 billion bird may have to sit in its nest a while longer. The latest delay involves the most serious problem yet encountered with the troubled Challenger: a basic defect in design that requires overhauling all three of the main engines. Unless the flaw can be quickly corrected, the problem could create a horrendous backup of civilian and military satellites waiting to be carried aloft and add millions of dollars to the cost of the shuttle program...
Ironically, the defect stems, at least in part, from NASA'S own supercaution. To improve performance, Challenger's engines were built to operate at 9% greater thrust than those of the first orbiter, Columbia, when the throttle is fully opened. Realizing that this extra power would vibrate the spacecraft more violently, NASA engineers at the Marshall Space Flight Center made a design change. They ordered reinforcement of the metal piping that carries hot, gaseous hydrogen fuel into the small chamber where the engines are first fired up and begin revving to their full 480,000 lbs. of thrust...
...honestly said to me, 'I wanted to kill you when you were born, because I felt so angry at myself and so terrible about the pain I knew you were going to have.' I'm not grim, but I'm still basically cringing from the defect. I remember kids sniggering and smirking-they called me Hopalong-and it has only been in recent years that I've pulled myself out of a certain anesthesia...
...Force Lt. Col. Mark Foutch said these "assets" are U.S. ships and planes, equipped with devices which can defect radiation...
...Justine Pinheiro, and that disappeared on an operating table in Minneapolis. On Nov. 5 the baby daughter of Charles and Marilyn Fiske of Bridgewater, Mass., underwent six hours of surgery that gave her a new liver and a good chance to recover from biliary atresia, a congenital liver defect that generally leads to death before the age of four. Justine Pinheiro is still waiting for a transplant to give her the same chance. The disparity in their fates raises one of the thorniest ethical questions facing modern medicine...