Word: leak
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...infrared telescope, NASA last week was confronted by new difficulties with the troubled space shuttle Challenger. Standing forlornly on its Florida pad since Nov. 30, the gleaming $1 billion orbiter will probably not be launched before mid-March at the earliest, two months late. Reason: a hazardous hydrogen leak required the removal last week of one of Challenger's three main rocket engines, a task never before attempted while a shuttle was still...
Using special sensors that can "sniff" the chemical signature of a gas, technicians traced the leak to a ¾-in.-long crack in the hot-gas manifold, where hydrogen and oxygen are gathered under high pressure (4,400 Ibs. per sq. in.) before combustion. Undiscovered, the leak might have caused an explosion. This week technicians hope to install a new engine, trucked from the National Space Technology Laboratories in Bay St. Louis, Miss...
NASA last week decided to forgo a test firing of the new $30 million engine. Two other test firings, at $1.5 million each, have already taken place. But the space agency still must weigh new quality-control procedures. The crack that ultimately caused the leak was discovered during the engine's manufacture at Rockwell International's Rocketdyne plant in Canoga Park, Calif. The crack was welded, but it was not considered necessary to take the additional step of hardening the weld (cost: about $200,000). Now the space agency faces extra bills totaling about $4 million...
...blue-sky one at that, interesting (and embarrassing) not because it endangered the nation's security but because it suggested that coming deficits would be much bigger than the Administration had yet admitted. More usual in the military's perennial game of hide-and-leak is the sudden declassification of scary intelligence about the Soviet Union at just those moments when the Pentagon is leaning on Congress for fatter appropriations. Nobody questions the need for military secrecy, but even military leaders realize that the hiding of information can be carried too far: post-mortems on the failed mission...
Last night my husband, a professor in the city, was driving out to use the automatic teller at his bank, the Cambridge Trust Company. Harvard Square branch, when he noticed a slow leak in his tire had rendered it nearly flat. Pulling into a Central Square service station, he was informed that use of the air pump cost 50 cents. Upon checking his pockets, he discovered that he had no money, not indeed any change, though he did have a money order for $20 which he was on his way to deposit. The attendant would not allow him to till...