Word: orbiter
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...problems were exasperating, almost tinged with gallows humor. Barely had the space shuttle Columbia settled into orbit last week than the ship's veteran commander, Marine Colonel Jack Lousma, 46, developed a severe case of motion sickness. The ship itself also suffered a recurrence of an old ailment: during lift-off it lost several dozen heat-shielding tiles. As Columbia whirled 150 miles above the earth, still other things began to go wrong-two television cameras failed, the $1.2 million toilet clogged, a latch on the cargo-bay doors temporarily jammed, mysterious static rang in the astronauts' ears...
...unfortunate that they obscured the mission's true importance. By making a record-breaking third voyage into space, Columbia was providing stunning proof of NASA's basic vision: that the U.S. could build and operate a spacecraft capable of moving in and out of orbit with the reliability of a commercial jet flying between terrestrial cities...
...some cases even retargeted, by remote control from the Strategic Air Command's airborne command post, Looking Glass, which has a dual-key system. The firing could also be done automatically by the Emergency Rocket Communication System, a series of ultra-high-frequency radio packs launched into orbit in lieu of warheads by special iCBMs. If a submarine commander were cut off from communications, and if he were convinced that a nuclear war had begun, he would have no authority to fire his missiles?but he would have the capability...
Yesterday, the space shuttle Columbia rocketed into orbit. Today, it's the Harvard men's tennis team's turn...
France has maintained friendly relations with Nicaragua out of the conviction that such sympathy will help keep the country from moving into the Soviet orbit. Despite U.S. dismay, it has even sold "defensive" weapons to the Sandinista government. Reagan raised this issue when President François Mitterrand visited Washington last week. Said Reagan: "We discussed all facets of it." Mitterrand said that the warm and cordial meeting was too short to resolve any disputes over Central America. Explained Mitterrand later: "Our analysis is different from the start. I think these people must come out of the economic misery...