Word: launch
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...curiosity trends for the moment away from space and toward cloning, we may sense that in the transition the future has grown a little retrograde, at least from a moral and theological point of view. As the American space program began in the '50s, rockets routinely exploded on the launch pad and collapsed into their own ruins like defunct Las Vegas casinos. The nation's leading rocketmeister was the boy wonder of Peenemunde, Wernher von Braun, inventor of Hitler's Vengeance Rocket, the V-2. (I Aim at the Stars was the title of Von Braun's memoir; comedian Mort...
...years before it can deploy a rocket reliable enough for military operations. In a region full of perils, Shahab-3 is only one more potential menace. U.S. warships in the Persian Gulf can be hit by shorter-range Iranian Scud missiles. And Israel, which reacted calmly to the Iranian launch, already lies within range of Syrian, Egyptian, Saudi and Iraqi missiles...
...clandestine launch came shortly after 7 a.m. last Wednesday at a hidden site in central Iran, but the secret lasted about as long as a puddle of water in the scorched Iranian desert. Although technicians had tried to camouflage preparations for the missile test, U.S. spy satellites easily picked up the bright white plume as the rocket soared to an arid region in southeast Iran. Within an hour, the CIA's operations center phoned the White House situation room. Shahab-3 (Farsi for "shooting star") had taken to the air with an 800-mile range--enough to deliver conventional bombs...
Rock wants to make it easier for the next generation: he's helping launch the Howard Lampoon, a humor magazine that will be based at the historically black college and modeled after the Harvard Lampoon. "If someone would have given me all this when I was on SNL, I would have blown it," says Rock. "I was totally undisciplined. I pretty much have a handle on things now. No matter how good you are, you have to work hard--or you'll only be as funny as the next...
...course, since the target audience does not yet speak, we don't know what they do think--but kids plainly love Teletubbies. About 2 million people in Britain have watched it daily since its launch last year; it has been sold to 22 countries; and since premiering on PBS in April, it has swiftly landed alongside Barney and Sesame Street in the top five of the system's kids' shows...