Word: orbitally
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...this slippery slide from "reason" to science, Sch?nborn is a direct descendant of the early 17th century Dutch clergyman and astronomer David Fabricius, who could not accept Johannes Kepler's discovery of elliptical planetary orbits. Why? Because the circle is so pure and perfect that reason must reject anything less. "With your ellipse," Fabricius wrote Kepler, "you abolish the circularity and uniformity of the motions, which appears to me increasingly absurd the more profoundly I think about it." No matter that, using Tycho Brahe's most exhaustive astronomical observations in history, Kepler had empirically demonstrated that the planets orbit elliptically...
...years, the cart has been before the horse in U.S. space policy. NASA has been attempting complex missions involving many astronauts without first developing an affordable and dependable means to orbit. The emphasis now must be on designing an all-new system that is lower priced and reliable. And if human space flight stops for a decade while that happens, so be it. Once there is a cheaper and safer way to get people and cargo into orbit, talk of grand goals might become reality. New, less-expensive throwaway rockets would allow NASA to launch more space probes...
...four. The maximum payload is almost never carried. Yet to accommodate the highly unrealistic initial goals, engineers made the shuttle huge and expensive. The Soviet space program also built a shuttle, called Buran, with almost exactly the same dimensions and capacities as its American counterpart. Buran flew to orbit once and was canceled, as it was ridiculously expensive and impractical...
...turns the pilots make are intended to bleed off speed in order to ease the shuttle down to Earth, but they are a lot more complicated than simply slaloming down a ski slope. The spacecraft's engines are shut off for good once it leaves orbit, meaning its descent is powerless. Flying a brick with wings, as the engineers have often called the ship, has a very fine margin of error. Lose your purchase on the air and go into a spin, and there's almost no way to pull out of it. "The attitude needs to be very, very...
...acidic British political commentator is a perfect biographer for the disputatious Founding Father. Eternally at war with whoever seemed inclined to pull the Republic into Britain's orbit, Jefferson could be scheming and hypocritical. Hitchens is not blind to the man's shortcomings, especially his readiness to tolerate slavery for the sake of domestic political advantage. But he credits Jefferson as a chief engineer of "the only revolution that still retains any power to inspire...