Word: orbit
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...mainly in Palm Springs, Calif. A confessed academic overachiever, she graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Stanford. He was born in Canada, the son of an electrical engineer, and ended up in Brea, Calif., where he spent five semesters at local colleges, dropping out and eventually drifting into Corman's orbit. As adolescents, she was a reader, while he was a drawer, often of fantastic sci-fi visions. She liked "film," as he put it, while he was drawn to the "movies." And he has been heard to wonder if, in her Palm Springs days, she would have dated...
...redesign problems will prolong the severe limitations on America's ability to place critical spy satellites into orbit. But a senior Air Force space surveillance officer insisted, "We're not blind up there, not by a long shot." The U.S., he explained reassuringly, has Atlas-Centaur and various versions of Titan rockets "tucked away somewhere" that could be used if the need becomes acute. Said he: "We're O.K." That was the only upbeat note of the week on America's continuing space troubles...
...Colonel Louis Kouts, Air Force deputy for space plans and policy, some 2.6 million lbs. of SDI weapons, sensors and other gear would have to be rocketed up. That, says Kouts, would grow to 4.4 million lbs. annually around the year 2000, as more exotic weapons are put in orbit...
...estimates go much higher: 4 million lbs. per year to start and vastly more than that if, for example, satellites were armored and made maneuverable to protect them against Soviet attack. SDI officials, says John Pike of the Federation of American Scientists, "are looking at increasing their annual to-orbit weight by a factor of ten to 50 times, and that assumes survivability apart from armor. If they go to armor, the numbers quickly become bizarre as opposed to just daunting...
Since 1973, Shoemaker has been photographing the sky in search of asteroids that periodically cross the earth's orbit and thus pose the danger of a collision. To date, he says, 57 such asteroids at least 1 km (.62 mile) in diameter have been cataloged. In addition, about three earth-crossing comets are detected each year. From the rate at which new earth crossers are discovered, Shoemaker estimates that there are some 2,000 asteroids in this category and that 100 comets intersect the earth's orbit every year...