Word: missilemen
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Gloom descended over the Cape. The sound of disappointment ranged from profanity to polite and frustrated Pollyannity. But if all of Kennedy's arcane hardware, and all its dedicated scientists, seemed suddenly to have been eclipsed, U.S. missilemen did not stoop to hide either their present discouragement or their future plans. At Russia's spaceport near Baikonur, Kazakhstan, all operations are covered with cautious secrecy; even newsmen rarely get near the place. Space shots are never announced until they are aloft and functioning well. Failures are muffled behind a wall of security. The Cape, by contrast, is open...
...overhead," said an Army officer. New Mexico's Democratic Governor Jack Campbell went even farther. Living in an area with supersonic missiles whizzing overhead, he claimed, would be less risky than driving on most highways. The assurances were part of a year-long "education" program mounted by U.S. missilemen in Utah and New Mexico to pave the way for the first prolonged series of missile shots over populated areas...
...compelling are the reasons, in fact, that some missilemen are talking up far more ambitious projects for the future. Among them: firing intercontinental missiles from the Pacific Northwest, from Alaska, and even from Polaris subs in the middle of the Pacific, to the spacious White Sands range...
...forms of insurance, accepting risks that no other insurer would dare, and keeping a wet finger in the shifting winds of world business, politics and science. It recently insured the on-time opening of the New York World's Fair next April. In February, Canada's missilemen scrubbed a scheduled launch just before countdown until liability coverage could be placed with Lloyd's - the only in surer that would touch it. "But we exercise our ruthlessness and choose only those risks we feel are insurable," says one Lloyd's underwriter. World War II was partly insurable...
...Force is represented by a cigar-chomping general who chews out his missilemen every hour on the hour ("I want no scrubs, no bugs, no red lights and no excuses!") and LeMay or LeMay not be recognizable. The astronauts are represented by a group of clean-cut, squarejawed, blue-eyed young men in the prime of life and the pink of condition...