Word: orbiteer
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Back in 1971, the Mariner 9 spacecraft had just become the first ship from earth to orbit another planet. The target was Sagan's old favorite, Mars. In less than a year of reconnaissance, the robot accumulated more information about the Red Planet than had been gathered in three centuries of earlier observation from earth. Yet to Sagan's chagrin, the feat was virtually ignored by American television. Four years later, the even more spectacular Viking landings on Mars were again all but ignored. Sagan decided something had to be done. Joining up with an equally dismayed colleague...
Finally, come Thursday afternoon, an important artifact arrives; an advance cassette copy of Little Stevie Orbit, Forbert's third album to feature a coyly self-referential title. "Can't tell what something's like/'Til you've been there yourself," says "Laughter Lou," a blast at critics that's sandwiched between two disarmingly open-hearted love songs to two different women. "Sailed around the world alone," says a song to an emotionally isolated rich girl, "Too bad it took ya nowhere...
Even the cool NASA professionals in the control room were not unmoved. With the orbiter's death came the end of another phase of the $1 billion Project Viking, the most ambitious mission to another planet to date. Back in 1975, twin spacecraft, each consisting of an orbiter and a lander, were sent off to Mars. A key objective: to determine if the Red Planet harbors life. After going into Martian orbit ten months later, the mated spacecraft split apart. Their spider-legged landers touched down on the surface, while the orbiters continued patrolling overhead, mapping the planet with...
...rocketing cost of petroleum pushes electrical utility rates further and further into orbit, "windmill power" is becoming a good bet. In Clayton, N. Mex., 15% of the town's residents now receive their electricity from a giant propeller-like windmill that swivels on a horizontal axis to capture the prevailing winds. In the Berkshires of western Massachusetts, retired Businessman Percy Newbery, 58, is generating an average of $30 worth of electricity per month by means of a windmill device that looks like a jet engine and sits on a 75-ft. wooden pole beside his house. In Hawaii, Puerto...
...barrio or the nightclub telling jokes and smoking dope. But the movie fails when it strives for epic humor. There are aliens, who appear suddenly, smoking dope by the treeful and sucking our heroes aboard. They give them "space coke," a powerful enough high to send the boys into orbit. And there are these awful dream sequences, including one depicting attempted necrophilia on the altar of some Mexican...