Word: lunar
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...episodes test the viewer's patience, and there is considerably more wit in the film's sumptuous design than in its dialogue. But anyone with an educated eye and a child's love of hyperbole can take delight in Gilliam's images and incidents. Starlight spangles a lunar beach as the baron's ship drifts ashore for his interview with an Italianate creature (Robin Williams, unbilled and hilarious) who identifies himself as "the King of Everything -- Rei di Tutto. But you may call me Ray." The king's body is detachable from his head, which provokes schizophrenia of celestial proportions...
...greyish deep sand . . . The Sea of Fertility doesn't stand out as well here as it does on earth. There's not as much contrast between that and the surrounding craters. The craters are all rounded off." Astronaut James Lovell skimmed less than 70 miles above the lunar surface as he gave that matter-of- fact first impression of the earth's great, ghostly satellite. Lovell waxed more metaphoric as he described the great blue ball, 233,000 miles away, that he, Frank Borman and William Anders had left some 69 hours earlier. "The earth from here is a grand...
...land rush of follow-up flights. Said Thomas Paine, acting administrator of NASA in 1968: "We are at the onset of a program of space flights that will extend through many generations." Since then, there have been other triumphs and other disasters. Yet the wonder of that lunar vista has remained a lure and an accomplishment, a sign that amid riot, war and discontent, something was still worth striving...
Then came the nightmare of Tet. At dawn Viet Nam time on Jan. 30, 1968, fireworks sputtered in celebration of the lunar new year. Amid the cacophony, Viet Cong and North Vietnamese forces attacked Da Nang, South Viet Nam's second-largest city, and seven other major towns, breaking the Tet truce. Within 24 hours they hit 36 of 44 provincial capitals and overran almost all of the former colonial capital of Hue. Communist shock troops penetrated the heart of Saigon to attack the U.S. embassy and presidential palace. They drove General William Westmoreland into a windowless command bunker. "What...
...commitment to sending humans to Mars, the Administration's space policy, announced by President Reagan in February, does envision eventual "human exploration of the solar system." Toward that end, NASA has launched Project Pathfinder, a program to develop 18 new space technologies. They include compact nuclear reactors for powering lunar or Martian bases, in-space construction and assembly of spacecraft, and orbiting fuel depots for moon and Mars ships. "You can talk about going to Mars," says Pathfinder Leader Robert Rosen, "but you can't do it without these technologies." Congress appropriated $40 million for the project's first year...