Word: mach
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Today's world is measured in light-years and Mach speed, and sheathed in silicon and alloy. In the world of 999, on the eve of the first millennium, time moved at the speed of an oxcart or, more often, of a sturdy pair of legs, and the West was built largely on wood. Europe was a collection of untamed forests, countless mile upon mile of trees and brush and brier, dark and inhospitable. Medieval chroniclers used the word desert to describe their arboreal world, a place on the cusp of civilization where werewolves and bogeymen still lunged...
...transpacific flights is expected to help create a lucrative new market for a plane that can shrink long distances. By the end of the decade, transpacific travel is expected to reach 315,000 passengers a day, or 15% more than will cross the Atlantic daily. A plane flying at Mach 2.5 (2 1/2 times the speed of sound, or 1,800 m.p.h.) could more than halve the duration of a Los Angeles-Tokyo flight to just 4 1/2 hours...
More Patriots are not the answer. Despite its gee-whiz exploits in the gulf, the Patriot flies at only three times the speed of sound and covers only a narrow swath of real estate. It has no trouble dealing with the unsophisticated Scud, a Mach 4 weapon that has proved to be the Edsel of missiles. An ICBM warhead, on the other hand, enters the atmosphere at 15 times the speed of sound. A Patriot could scarcely get off its launcher before an ICBM did its damage...
...Nevada desert? The 1986 defense budget contained a mysterious reference to the "Aurora" project. Now a prototype of the aircraft is reported to be rocking the desert with shock waves during test flights. Rumors say the Lockheed plane may be unmanned and can fly at speeds greater than Mach 6 (4,100 m.p.h.) -- fast enough to cross the Pacific in less than two hours. Neither the Air Force nor Lockheed will confirm its existence...
...high-flying ambition. The current Concorde, operated by British Airways and Air France, has a range of 4,000 miles and a payload of just 100 passengers. Concorde II would fly twice the distance carrying as many as 300 passengers. The new plane would streak through the stratosphere at Mach 2.5 (2 1/2 times the speed of sound, or about 1,875 m.p.h., in contrast to the current model's Mach 2, or 1,500 m.p.h...