Word: launching
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...missile into a brief footnote to the news. The Stark was sailing at Condition Three, the middle of five stages of alert, and its weapons systems were supposed to be fully manned and operational. But there was an inexplicable lapse, with key radars failing to detect the missile's launch and the Phalanx system remaining off. This was clearly a tragic failure for a vessel sailing in an area where more than 200 ships have been attacked during the past three years. "Everybody in town knew there was a war going on in the gulf except the Navy," says Jeffrey...
...succession of ever more sophisticated attacks from the air. In 1921, Army Air Service General Billy Mitchell demonstrated that rudimentary aerial bombardment could scuttle the most heavily armed warships, a lesson Japan put to good use when it nearly destroyed the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor. Carriers that could launch swarms of fighter planes became the dominant sea weapon in World War II. Although the Reagan Administration has committed the U.S. to a 600-ship Navy with 15 carriers, some strategists consider flattops to be expensive behemoths. The problem with surface ships, argues Jack Beatty, a journalist and critic...
...feat. For the first time, the Soviets successfully tested the brand-new Energia, a 220- ft. rocket capable of thrusting more than 100-ton payloads into orbit, at least four times that of the U.S. space shuttle's orbiter. A Soviet TV commentator declared in a post-launch videotape that the new rocket could lift into space "the blocks from which cities will be built." Even U.S. observers were impressed. "It's the most powerful rocket in the world -- ever," said James Oberg, a Houston-based expert on Soviet space ventures, after the launch. Unlike the usual Soviet behemoths...
...space program is gridlocked over when and how to deploy a space station, for example, the Soviet Mir (Peace) station, up for more than a year, has been manned for half that time and is now being expanded. This year the U.S. has carried out only four successful orbital launches, while the Soviets have had 37. The U.S. space shuttle is grounded until at least the summer of 1988. In the meantime, the evidence grows that a scaled-down Soviet shuttle has already been tested. TASS, the Soviet news agency, last week disclosed that the new rocket will launch "reusable...
Energia's debut may push the balance of space power decisively into Soviet hands. With it, Moscow can easily launch its own shuttle. The Soviets can send up large modules to Mir to convert it into a full-fledged research and manufacturing station or send them into orbit to be assembled as a manned interplanetary ship. And they now have the muscle to do what the Pentagon cannot for the foreseeable future: orbit antisatellite and antimissile laser and particle-beam weapons for Star Wars-like battle stations in outer space...