Word: nasa
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...eleventh-hour diversion showed, as President Reagan noted in a congratulatory postflight telephone chat with the Challenger crew, that for all of NASA's "miracles" in space, "no one can do anything about the weather." Reagan had hoped to be watching at the Kennedy Space Center and, as slightly cynical Washington political observers speculated, perhaps bolster his popularity among women voters by personally welcoming Sally Ride, 32, the pioneering U.S. woman space traveler, on her return. But he scrubbed his visit after indications grew that foul weather might interfere with the Florida landing; the White House explained that Reagan...
...Clearly, NASA'S shuttle chief, Air Force Lieut. General James Abrahamson, badly wanted Challenger to land at Kennedy. By returning directly to its launch area, the shuttle might have cut at least a week off its turnaround time, the number of days it takes technicians to prepare the complex ship for another flight. Challenger now will have to be piggybacked by a NASA 747 to Florida, probably at the end of this week. According to Abrahamson, that will delay its next flight, originally scheduled for mid-August, by about eight days. Moreover, the space agency will probably...
Still, even though he was left sitting at fogbound Kennedy without his "bird," NASA Chief James Beggs could rightly take pride in a mission performed in what he called "almost flawless fashion." Abrahamson fully concurred, pointing out that Challenger accomplished 96% of its objectives and that there were far fewer "anomalies" than on any previous mission, only 21 by preliminary count. (There were 42 anomalies on the last shuttle flight, in April.) Two of these, however, played a part in the decision not to prolong the flight another day or so in hopes of homing in at Kennedy. They involved...
Other experiments on ST57 demand no more than a throw of a switch. Six are contained in a joint U.S.-West German package called OSTA-2 (after NASA'S old Office of Space and Terrestrial Applications), which will test such technologies as glass forming, alloy making and crystal growing in weightlessness. Two other experiments are repeat efforts aimed at producing superpure pharmaceuticals and precisely shaped latex particles for use in medical tasks like blood-flow measurement...
...Justices also unanimously decided that federal civilian employees must rely on the "elaborate remedial system" of the civil service for redress of alleged arbitrary and illegal actions. They ruled against NASA Engineer William Bush, who claimed that he had been demoted in retaliation for his public complaints about the agency's management. Although the Civil Service Commission's appeals review board awarded Bush back pay and reinstatement, he sued his boss for damages for denying his right to free speech. In rejecting his appeal, the court noted that Bush had already been compensated for the injustice. Richard Redenius...