Word: nears
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Near Perfect Vacuum
Manufacturers, too, may eventually find the moon economically irresistible. Anywhere they choose to locate on the 15 million square miles of lunar surface, there is a near perfect vacuum?a condition that is obtained on earth only with thick walls and elaborate pumps, and at great expense. As the need grows for "hard" vacuums in industrial processes on earth, the day may come when certain lightweight, easily transportable items that require a vacuum in their production?electronic tubes, computer components, hearing aids ?can be made more economically in lunar factories...
...earth's surface (most are burned up by the atmosphere), they estimate that meteors have deposited 450 billion tons of iron, 30 billion tons of nickel, 10 billion tons of phosphorous, 9 billion tons of carbon, 6 billion tons of copper and 3 billion tons of cobalt on or near the lunar surface. If their figures are correct, the meteor fall would also have contributed 300 billion tons of carbonaceous chondrites, containing about 30 billion tons of water chemically locked in crystals with other compounds...
Tsiolkovsky and Goddard are dead. Oberth, now 75 and living quietly near Nürnberg on a meager pension, has mixed feelings now that his lifelong dream is about to come true. "Sometimes I feel like an unmusical person who attends a concert and doesn't really understand what seems to excite everybody," he says. "On other occasions I feel like a mother goose who has hatched a brood and now, somewhat perplexed, watches the flock going off into the water. It is only very rarely that I have the satisfaction that everybody believes I ought to feel...
...accomplishing something. But nobody listens any more. You request a ceasefire, and they smile and keep firing." That lack of accomplishment was painfully apparent. In what amounted to Egypt's most successful cross-Suez attack since the end of the 1967 war, "special commando forces" penetrated Israeli positions near Port Tewfik, severely damaging two tanks, killing five Israelis, wounding another three and taking one prisoner. (Egypt, in a characteristic exaggeration, claimed 40 Israelis were killed or wounded.) No Egyptian losses were mentioned by either side...