Word: midair
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...White Sands Missile Range had ever seen anything quite like it. With a burst of smoke and a flash of light, a 40-ft.- tall white obelisk shuddered briefly, popped off a launch pad and rose 150 ft. over the New Mexico desert. Then it suddenly stopped in midair, moved sideways for 350 ft. and started back down, engines firing all the way. At the last moment, four rodlike pods shot out of the tail to ease the bullet-shaped rocket gently to the ground...
...months -- shows how much was lost in the past two decades, a period in which the U.S. space program was all but stalled. The current fleet of American launch vehicles -- including the shuttle that balked on launch in mid-August and the Titan IV launcher that exploded in midair 11 days before that -- were built from blueprints drawn in the 1960s and '70s, a lifetime ago in terms of research into materials, semiconductors and computer design...
...Genevieve, Missouri, south of St. Louis, volunteer inmates from the Farmington Correctional Center heaved sandbags side by side with people from the neighborhood. "Man, these guys can throw sandbags like you wouldn't believe!" marveled Gerald Basler, a highway- maintenance worker. "Some of these guys can catch them in midair with one hand!" Ken Novak, who is serving eight years for first-degree assault, showed a reciprocal friendliness. "We had one lady who had tears in her eyes, she was so happy to see guys from prison coming to help," Novak related. "I told her my shoulder was clean...
...into the swarm. Once she's inside, the sound of her wings, beating 250 to 500 times a second, becomes the mosquito equivalent of a flirty hair flip. The males frantically elbow each other to get at her, and within seconds one of them scores. The pair, copulating in midair, float down in crazy circles, coming briefly to rest in a tangle of legs and antennae. Who cares if that hum might later cost them their lives? It was worth...
Bombing runs that visibly reduced Iraqi targets to instant rubble. Midair collisions between Scud and Patriot missiles. Pentagon press conferences explaining live the blow by blow of battle. To the U.S. public, these unforgettable images made the gulf war the most reported conflict in memory. But journalists, aware that enterprise was thwarted and that news organs served mainly as conduits for government, regard the war as a setback for press freedom and thus for holding bureaucrats accountable...