Word: orbiteer
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...wind up in the movie, it helps explain why Sunset Boulevard can be called the film that invented camp. Egomaniacal Norma, her slavish chauffeur Max (who turns out to be her former director and ex-husband) and down-and-out screenwriter Joe Gillis, who falls into her orbit out of sympathy and a love of luxury, are all a bit ridiculous. Where the London staging took them seriously, the Los Angeles rethink sends them up. Yet it wisely manages to make them more likeable as well, so that the doomy ending retains genuine sadness...
Perhaps now the astronomers and other "pure" scientists will stop whining about how manned space flight is stealing all the money from real science. Why? Because last week man -- that clunky, bulky, heaving, breathing space lunk -- saved Hubble. And Hubble, the $1.6 billion orbiting telescope, is the kind of robot observer that scientists like to claim is the real way to explore space, far better than the clumsy Spam-in-a-can bipeds we periodically and extravagantly hurl into orbit. Well, now that man has done this for the robots, it is time for the robots and their human advocates...
...launch date for the Hubble Space Telescope repair mission loomed during the waning days of November, NASA's veteran spin controllers did their best to lower public expectations. The seven astronauts who would ride into orbit aboard Endeavour faced the toughest assignment ever handed to a shuttle crew and the most complicated mission since the moonshots of two decades ago. They would have to wrestle huge pieces of machinery into tight spaces, disconnect and connect fragile electronic equipment, and make sure no loose screws damaged the delicate telescope -- all while wearing puffy pressure suits and bulky gloves in a vacuum...
...much of the lethargy is fear? Cuba's detachment from the Soviet orbit has not lessened the state's powerful instruments of political control. The security apparatus is omnipresent. Driving through Palma Soriano in the mountains above Santiago, we stop in a tiny cafe and strike up a conversation with a customer. In less than five minutes, a car screeches to a halt outside and four hard-eyed men stride in. Everyone falls silent as they shake hands all around, staring intently into each face. We get up to leave, and the leader smugly inquires, "Going already?" Marked...
...three main engines roar to life. He remembers well that when the eight steel bolts that attach the rocket boosters to the launching pad are blown away, there's no turning back. He has felt the crushing sensation as 6 million lbs. of thrust hurl him into orbit. And he knows how sublime and scary it is to float freely in space, tethered to the ship by only a slender lifeline. But none of Musgrave's four missions have fully prepared him for the challenge he faces next week, when he and six other astronauts are scheduled to blast...