Word: orbited
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Quinta seems, from terrestrial observations, a promising target, and getting there is half of Lem's fun. The Eurydice is constructed in orbit around a moon of Saturn; its thermonuclear flowstream engines use hydrogen intake as fuel and can achieve a velocity of 99% the speed of light. While the scout ship Hermes, weighing a mere 180,000 tons, is sent off to reconnoiter Quinta, the Eurydice lingers in the vicinity of a black hole. When Hermes returns, the mother ship will execute an "incomprehensible maneuver called 'passage through a retrochronal toroid,' thanks to which she would reappear...
...splashed into the Pacific Ocean "in strict conformity with the flight mission," as the official report put it. Then, unexpectedly, there was a glitch: the payload, a full-size dummy satellite, crashed into the sea because of a "faulty operation of its onboard systems," instead of propelling itself into orbit...
...failure was nothing compared with the magnitude of the feat. For the first time, the Soviets successfully tested the brand-new Energia, a 220- ft. rocket capable of thrusting more than 100-ton payloads into orbit, at least four times that of the U.S. space shuttle's orbiter. A Soviet TV commentator declared in a post-launch videotape that the new rocket could lift into space "the blocks from which cities will be built." Even U.S. observers were impressed. "It's the most powerful rocket in the world -- ever," said James Oberg, a Houston-based expert on Soviet space ventures...
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...