Word: haleakala
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...second Apollo experiment also ran into difficulty. Astronomers at the McDonald Observatory near Fort Davis, Texas, the Lick Observatory on Mount Hamilton, Calif., and the Haleakala Observatory on Maui, Hawaii, were unable to locate the lunar reflector, an arrangement of 100 prisms that they hoped would reflect laser beams from earth. The beams were to be used as a precision measuring tool that would yield, among other things, the exact distance between earth and moon, proof of whether there is really any drift between continents and accurate figures on the earth's wobble. The major reason for the trouble...
...arid, cactus-sprinkled, sleepily sloping uplands, rain forests, anthurium and macadamia groves, bizarre moonscapes of rock lava topped by the snow-capped peaks of Mauna Kea (13,796 ft.) and still-active Mauna Loa (13,680 ft.). Middle-aged Maui is dominated by the rugged crater of dormant Haleakala (House of the Sun). At its rim nestles a Defense Department observatory; the pack trip to the floor of the crater is like spending a day on the moon...
...four-month exploration, Twain forever yearned to return to Hawaii. In 1881, he wrote to a Hawaiian friend that "if the house would only burn down, we would pack up the cubs and fly to the isles of the blest, and shut ourselves up in the healing solitudes of Haleakala and get a good rest; for the mails do not intrude there, nor yet the telephone and the telegraph. And after resting, we would come down the mountain a piece and board with a godly, breech-clouted native, and eat poi and dirt and give thanks to whom all thanks...