Word: orbit
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...industry hopes--prays--that audiences believe all the hype for these threequels. Movie people know that for every Spider-Man, there's a thudding Hulk; for every Shrek, a wildly off-orbit Treasure Planet. They also fret that with so many seen-it-before films clogging the May-June release schedule, sequel fatigue may set in. Pandya suggests this could hurt the June 15 opening of Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, a follow-up to the 2005 film Fantastic Four...
...Jong-il pulled a fast one on Russia's then-rookie President Vladimir Putin. Back then, Kim told Putin - who visited Pyongyang en route to his debut G8 summit in Okinawa - that North Korea would scrap its missile programs if other countries agreed to blast its satellites into orbit for the purposes of "peaceful space exploration." Putin tried to play Kim's statement as a trump card in his case against Washington's plans to develop a national missile defense system. But, the following month, the North Korean leader told his South Korean guests: "I made this and other remarks...
...what's not to like? For starters, the timeline. Earth-orbit tests of the vehicles would not take place until 2014; the first landing is planned for 2020, with the outpost to follow in 2024. That's a lot of Congresses and presidential administrations that would need to stay focused. Then there's the money. NASA's annual budget is a relatively modest $17 billion, and the new plans are based on the assumption that the figure will not rise appreciably. Things should get easier in 2010, when the aging shuttles are mothballed, freeing up perhaps $6 billion annually...
...allure of that second destination got a big boost with last week's discovery of fresh signs of water on Mars. It was made by the Mars Global Surveyor, a spacecraft that has been in Martian orbit since 1997 and finally winked out only last month. Before it did, it produced exhaustive photographic maps of the planet, including shots of tens of thousands of now dry gullies that were almost certainly carved by water. Most of those channels haven't changed over time, but at two of the sites investigators found what appear to be the tracks of flows that...
...there's plenty of reason for cautious optimism. After trying to reinvent the technological wheel with the dangerous and temperamental space shuttle, NASA is returning to what it does best. The hardware and crew for the lunar base will be sent into orbit atop comparatively reliable, disposable boosters, based on the sturdy and powerful engines of the shuttle and long-extinct Saturn boosters. The lunar orbital vehicles will be souped-up Apollo command modules and the landers will be similarly updated lunar excursion modules - the lovable, buglike LEMs. Astronauts on Apollos 15, 16 and 17 already showed that lunar rovers...