Word: nasa
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...aerospace contractors, it is the prize of the decade: a $17 billion U.S. space station the size of a football field. Thus when the bids for four major parts of the project arrived at NASA offices last week, the competition was weighty indeed. A typical bid package ran to nearly 20,000 pages, weighed three tons and filled scores of boxes. In one competition a consortium headed by Rockwell International and another led by McDonnell Douglas are battling for a $2 billion to $3 billion contract to build the space station's framework, air locks and guidance and communications systems...
...country from city to city as the nation's capital moved, went into hiding during the War of 1812, was transferred from federal department to department until it wound up in the National Archives in Washington, sanctified in helium and watched over by an electronic camera conceived by NASA. The quill age to the space age, and at every stage, a nation full of grateful believers making a constant noisy fuss over a piece of writing barely equivalent to a short story: much theme, no plot and characters inferred...
...NASA, however, remains sensitive about its treatment by the news media. The agency is trying to scotch an ad campaign sponsored by the Society of Professional Journalists and the Advertising Council that features a picture of the Challenger explosion. Beneath the photograph are the words, "If the press didn't tell us, who would?" Protested NASA Public Affairs Director Shirley Green: "Any suggestion that the public would not have learned the reasons for the accident is totally inaccurate...
...mission: science fellow at the Center for International - Security and Arms Control, a think tank at Stanford University. Ride's switch to the private sector, effective Aug. 15, comes in the wake of her divorce from Astronaut Steven Hawley and reports that the ambitious spacewoman had become restless at NASA. "It was going to be a long time until she flew again," confides a colleague, "and she wasn't particularly turned on even by that." Speaking to reporters on the day of the announcement, Ride called space flight "something that I'm aware most people don't get the chance...
...Soviet salesmen touring the U.S. last week certainly made an aggressive capitalistic pitch: since NASA is out of the business of launching commercial satellites, the Soviet Union would happily fill the void -- for a reasonable price. The delegation from the civilian space agency Glavkosmos visited Washington and Houston, offering to loft U.S. satellites for about half the price of a ride on the European Ariane rocket. To assuage U.S. fears that technological secrets would be compromised, the Soviets even offered to accept the satellites in sealed packages...