Word: nasa
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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About 1,500 Gooney Birds still fly -- primarily on military and scientific missions. When Basler gets his hands on one that has been well maintained, he first lengthens the fuselage by 40 inches, replaces the original transverse spar supporting the wings with a newer, stronger one and adds NASA-designed wing tips to improve the craft's aerodynamics. Next come modern instruments, radar and communications equipment for the cockpit and then two 1,420-h.p. Pratt & Whitney turboprop-jet engines. Since January, Basler has filled orders for four jet-style DC-3s from air-freight companies. Demand has been...
...NASA's long ordeal is nearly over. The space shuttle has again shown it can blast astronauts into orbit on biblical smoke pillars. There is much to admire in the sight of the astronauts circling the earth in their splendid reusable spaceship, but there is also something disappointing. For the past two decades the American space program has been going mainly in circles, riding a splendid shuttle to nowhere. Once upon a time NASA launched men to the moon and sent robots across the solar system; there was even brave talk of expeditions to Mars. Now that the nightmare...
Thursday morning, as I sat in front of the television watching NASA technicians worry the Discovery through its countdown, I ate a star for breakfast. The star was in the form of a waffle. It consisted mostly of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and hydrogen, with a sprinkling of other elements. Except for the hydrogen, those atoms had been forged in a star that exploded and died long before our sun and solar system were born. The hydrogen was made in the big bang that allegedly began the universe. Some astronomers think that it was on dust grains floating in interstellar space...
...space program was last seen in the 1960s and early '70s, when the moon landings had to share television time with Viet Nam and burning ghettos. Since then, NASA, several Administrations and Congresses have found it politically * more expedient to build space hardware than to say what it is going to be used for. NASA and the nation have no program in space, no goal. It's as if the interstate highway system had been designed before the Louisiana Purchase and only went as far west as New Jersey. They build office parks where they need a truck stop. Most...
There are many space programs, grand dreams, that could reconnect us with our cosmic selves, give shape to NASA's activities and stop the space agency from making $10 billion wrong turns. They are ideas that were filed in the round basket in NASA's rush to re-ignite the shuttle's engines: a manned expedition to Mars, a moon base, a reinvigorated program of unmanned solar system exploration, or even the so-called Mission to Earth, which would strive to understand our own planet before we ruin it for good. Like ambivalent lovers, NASA and the American people have...