Word: orbital
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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President Reagan raised skeptical eyebrows back in 1986 when he rhapsodized about plans to build the Orient Express, a hypersonic jet that could take off from a New York airport and reach Tokyo in two hours by taking a side trip into orbit. It turns out that while space fan DAN QUAYLE has doggedly pursued the plans -- with marginal success so far--the former Soviet Union had plowed ahead of the U.S. Soviet scientists successfully tested an engine for a space plane last year. The Pentagon might consider placing a few help-wanted ads in Yeltsin country...
...operation was focused on Poland, the most populous of the Soviet satellites in Eastern Europe and the birthplace of John Paul II. Both the Pope and the President were convinced that Poland could be broken out of the Soviet orbit if the Vatican and the U.S. committed their resources to destabilizing the Polish government and keeping the outlawed Solidarity movement alive after the declaration of martial...
Without question, these recent additions to the scientific tool kit hold tremendous practical promise. A more accurate atomic clock, for instance, is not just a curiosity. "If we can put better clocks into orbit," notes William Phillips, a physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, "we might improve the global positioning system enough to land airplanes in pea-soup fog." Even now it is not difficult to imagine that STMs might be employed by the semiconductor industry to produce minuscule electronic devices, that optical tweezers might be used by surgeons to correct defects in a single cell...
...most stunning image is of Venus' second tallest mountain, Maat Mons, which rises 8 km (5 miles). Most of the planet's many peaks, including 9.5-km- (6-mile-) high Maxwell Montes, look bright in the radar pictures Magellan takes from its orbit above the perpetual cloud cover. That means they are strong reflectors of radar waves. But Maat Mons is dark; like the Stealth bomber, it absorbs much of the radar falling...
These potentially explosive changes, all happening beyond the orbit of Washington policymakers, include...