Word: fails
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Throwaway rockets can fail too. Last month a French-built Ariane exploded on lift-off. No one cared, except the insurance companies that covered the payload, because there was no crew aboard. NASA's insistence on sending a crew on every shuttle flight means risking precious human life for mindless tasks that automated devices can easily carry out. Did Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon really have to be there to push a couple of buttons on the Mediterranean Israeli Dust Experiment, the payload package he died to accompany to space...
...strange how we glimpse the impossible only when it fails. How can this spacecraft exist, one that leaves the earth like a ballistic missile, a fragile plane strapped to half a million gallons of explosive fuel, but two weeks later returns as a glider, swooping in wide S turns back to earth under nature's power alone? The engineers who build these things know that so much has to work so perfectly and with such precise timing that we should expect them to fail catastrophically every 100 missions or so. That's why NASA must be America's most optimistic...
...Still, I was deeply afraid of death. I prayed to the gods of my ancestors for sufficient courage to face death. Eventually, a quiet peace came over me and I was sure of myself; my courage would not fail...
...peninsula. Since America's military options are exceedingly limited?by the lack of any good targets to strike in North Korea, by overcommitment of U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, by Seoul's unwillingness to participate in any war?North Korea probably does not fear an attack if negotiations fail again. Neither does it likely fear major economic repercussions. Tokyo might be prepared to consider new sanctions of its own, for example, on monetary remittances from North Koreans living in Japan, but China and South Korea probably would...
...desperate?sense that the more we change things, the more they remain the same. Once again, it seems, we are trapped in a destructive political cycle: we elect Presidents and expect them to be superhuman?solving every conceivable problem and delivering the nation from misery and failure; when they fail to live up to such lofty demands, we seek to depose them...