Word: launchful
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...fall, and some sources say they may not get started until next year. The delay suits some Republicans, who fear that Burton's hearings will turn into a partisan circus. And it leaves the spotlight to Tennessee Republican Fred Thompson, a far more presentable prosecutor, who is likely to launch Senate hearings this summer...
HOUSTON: Russia's space program was dealt another blow as a Zenit-2 booster rocket carrying a military satellite exploded and crashed after liftoff from Kazakstan. The explosion was caused by an emergency shutdown of the rocket's first stage engines 48 seconds after launch, Russian Space Agency officials said. No injuries were reported. It was the twenty-eighth launch and seventh failure of a Zenit-2 since 1985. For Russia, the disaster is the latest in a string of setbacks, which have included fires on-board Mir and delays in the construction of critical components for the international space...
...potential is there for some form of nukenapping--grabbing weapons for ransom or nuclear blackmail--or sales to rogue states or terrorists, or unauthorized launches by renegade commanders. Some Russians even fret about a nuclear civil war. If a region in Siberia were to declare its independence, a retired senior officer in Moscow speculates, "the entire missile force in the area might cut itself off from the chain of command and control and get reprogrammed to be able to launch at will...
...secret CIA study last September, first reported by the Washington Times, rated the likelihood of such a launch as still low but found the Russian control system under such unprecedented stress that some high-level commanders in Moscow were worried about the security of their nuclear weapons. The CIA also reported that the famous code briefcases are not what they seem. They allow the President or the Defense Minister or the Chief of the General Staff to authorize a nuclear attack, but the actual ability to launch missiles lies much further down the line of command, even in regional command...
Spielberg may also have chafed as an executive and poster child for investors in the long launch of DreamWorks, which is moseying toward its first feature release more than two years after attracting $2 billion in start-up capital. "You can tell he was depressed over the business stuff he's got into," says a colleague. "He always says, pleadingly, 'I'm only a film director!' But of course he's much more: studio owner, pop icon, a father, a mentor, a major mogul in spite of himself...