Word: launch
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...launch of Loral's Intelsat 708 communications satellite in Sichuan province in February 1996 was a fiery disaster. The Chinese-made Long March rocket that was supposed to propel the American satellite into space crashed into a hillside 22 sec. after lift-off and exploded, raining flaming rocket fuel and red-hot shards of the 3-ton satellite on a nearby village. China initially said six villagers choked or burned to death, and later upped the number to 56, but U.S. estimates put the fatalities closer...
Loral's ill-fated launch may also have caused collateral damage of a different kind. In the wake of the crash, a committee of Western aerospace experts, headed by a top Loral official, was tapped to investigate. It drew up a preliminary report on specific reasons the Long March may have failed--and faxed it over to the Chinese. This technical feedback, a federal investigation concluded, may have helped China improve the accuracy of its rocket and missile programs. The Defense Department found that Loral and Hughes, another satellite company on the committee, had engaged in a "serious export-control...
Restrictions on the sale of strategic products to China began loosening with the end of the cold war, and industry rushed in as the doors to China's large and largely untapped markets opened. In the commercial-satellite business alone, China imported $168 million worth of satellites and launch equipment last year, up from $4 million in 1994. Sales of "dual use" products--nonmilitary items with military applications--to China have long had security lapses. In 1994 McDonnell Douglas sold China machine tools for a civilian machine center in Beijing. The company learned later that they had been diverted...
...Gullichsen isn't sweating the competition. Instead he's readying his next company, MetaCorp, due for launch this summer. It will allow customers to license their own offshore companies, complete with online banking, all dispensed via another self-run website based, like Tonic, in Gullichsen's Tonga fiefdom...
Another reason officers give for grounding the Apaches is what might happen to the 400,000 Kosovars crowded into Albania if the choppers fly. "If we launch attacks from Albania, the Serbs aren't going to see it as a neutral country," a Joint Staff planner says. "And a lot of those refugees are in crowded camps within range of Serbian artillery." Already smarting over charges that the allied bombing accelerated Milosevic's ethnic cleansing, the Pentagon doesn't want to be blamed for triggering more civilian carnage...