Word: orbitals
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Atlas-Centaur rockets have been launching U.S. satellites into orbit for the past 25 years, but last week the sturdy workhorse suffered a rare failure. Less than a minute after lift-off from Pad 36B at Cape Canaveral in threatening weather, a $78 million, 137-ft. rocket disappeared into rain- swollen thunderheads and went out of control. A range safety officer hit the destruct button, and the rocket exploded along with its payload, an $83 million communications satellite. For NASA, struggling to recover from the loss of the Challenger shuttle 14 months ago, the aborted flight broke a string...
...surface layers of the sun so far outward that they will cool to about two-thirds of the current 6,000 degrees C surface temperature, and redden. The sun will have become a red giant, so large that it will engulf the planet Mercury, perhaps extending to encompass the orbit of the earth. Even if the swollen sun stretches no farther out than Mercury, however, the heat reaching earth will be from 500 to 1,000 times as great as it is today. Oceans will boil, and life will be incinerated...
...operatives." Beyond risking exposure abroad, this meant that the "unprofessional" operation was never guided at home by people who understood such essentials as the "situation in Iran; the difficulties of dealing with terrorists; the mechanics of conducting a diplomatic opening." Charged the board: "The operation functioned largely outside the orbit of the U.S. government ((and)) was not subject to critical reviews of any kind...
...take-charge junior staff aide "made most of the significant operational decisions" on the Iran initiative and ran an extensive supply network for the contras, yet he and his associates "functioned largely outside the orbit of the U.S. Government. Their activities were not subjected to critical reviews of any kind." The result was "unprofessional" and "unsatisfactory"; in negotiating with Iran, North failed to achieve even his own questionable goals. "The U.S. hand was repeatedly tipped and unskillfully played," said the commission. "Repeatedly, Lieut. Colonel North permitted arms to be delivered without the release of a single captive...
...thundered into space last week, the tall, slender rocket looked like hundreds of satellite boosters launched by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Despite a drizzling rain, the blast-off put a marine observation satellite into orbit without a hitch. The launch pad, though, was not in California or Florida. It was on Tanegashima Island, and the rocket bore on its side, in prominent black letters, a single word: NIPPON...