Word: orbit
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...crammed with advanced electronics, the DC-X was designed to take advantage of a burst of technological progress -- and it shows. Thanks to a skin as thin as a credit card, which replaces the heavy aluminum shell of conventional spacecraft, the rocket is light enough to leap into orbit in a single bound, avoiding the wasteful shedding of expensive booster stages. The DC-X is the world's first fully reusable spacecraft, and its myriad computer systems make it easy to launch and repair. It can be fired off by a crew of three, far fewer than the army...
...Even if the DC-X continues to perform well (the next flight is scheduled for this week), it could take five years and at least $2 billion before a full-scale Delta Clipper is ready for business. But aerospace executives are already dreaming about the day when getting into orbit costs no more than a transatlantic flight. Among their pet ideas: nuclear-waste disposal, space- based advertising and low-earth-orbit tourism. A weekend visit to a space station, anyone...
Systems waiting to go into orbit include the first of the new Milstar communications satellites, designed to maintain military communications in a nuclear war; a Defense Support Program heat-sensing satellite to give warning of hostile missile launches; and a Lacrosse satellite with a special radar system to provide detailed pictures of the ground even through clouds and at night. One of the two Lacrosses currently in orbit has been up for more than four years and needs to be replaced. "Any lengthy delay in getting the Titan IV operational could be critical to the U.S. surveillance capability," said Richelson...
That is when the earth will be passing close to the orbit of the comet Swift-Tuttle, which reappeared last year for the first time since 1862, swooped around the sun on Dec. 12 and headed back toward the outer solar system. Like all other comets, Swift-Tuttle sheds debris consisting largely of conglomerations of ice and dust, most of it boiled from the comet when it is in the vicinity of the sun. This material remains in orbit and gradually disperses along the comet's entire path, in effect forming a giant debris- laden tube in space. Each August...
...Leonids, cast-off material from another comet, appear to radiate from a point in Leo. While most of the cometary debris consists of small particles, each tiny piece traveling at such high speed packs a mighty wallop capable of inflicting severe damage on anything it encounters. Consequently, satellites orbiting above the protective atmosphere during a heavy meteor shower are vulnerable. With this danger in mind, NASA prudently postponed last week's scheduled launch of the shuttle Discovery, which otherwise would have been in orbit during the height of the meteor bombardment. Explained a NASA spokesman: "It's too uncertain...