Word: kluger
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...seven has fallen. Alan Shepard, who in 1961 became the first American in space and, a decade after that, perhaps rescued the space program from oblivion, died Tuesday night at age 74. "There are few people with a more exalted place in the pantheon," says TIME space correspondent Jeffrey Kluger. "He was the first. But even more remarkable was his second trip." After 10 years on the ground with ear trouble, Shepard was 47 in 1971 when, with very little training, he took the Apollo 14 lunar module back up -- and spent 33 hours on the moon's surface...
...course, while he was up there he also hit a couple of golf balls, and perhaps that's the way Americans who watched it will remember him. But Kluger says that Shepard was known as "the ice commander" for good reason. "He was either all business or he was this genial swashbuckling rocket jock, and he would switch back and forth without warning, according to his own internal clock." Whatever foibles this space pioneer carried inside him, they never poisoned the camaraderie among the original seven Mercury astronauts named by NASA in April 1959. Not too long ago, says Kluger...
...time for NASA to take a hard look at this project," suggests Jeffrey Kluger, author of "Apollo 13" and TIME Science writer. "A lot of what we can do aboard the station we can do aboard the shuttle." If you were hoping to jump on the first flight up, you'll have better luck getting tickets for the replica Titanic...
...Titan could indeed be the Walt Disney of the solar system," says TIME Science correspondent Jeffrey Kluger, "a cryogenic version of Earth waiting to be revived." And its time is coming. Six billion years from now, as the Sun expands outward in Elvis-like death throes and Earth and Mars have long been incinerated, Titan will enter its spring. Its surface temperature will creep above freezing, and life may indeed sprout -- giving the new organisms about 500 million years to evolve and achieve space travel before they, too, are engulfed in flames...
...Unfortunately, says Kluger, "that's long enough to evolve, but not nearly enough to get off Titan." Maybe we could drop off a probe, and leave instructions on the dashboard...