Word: payloaders
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...change, the mood at the Kennedy Space Center was upbeat last Friday as a ; Delta rocket carrying a secret military payload for the Star Wars space defense program lifted off flawlessly at 11:08 a.m. "We feel we are back in the groove," said NASA's Delta project manager William Russell. The flight was Delta's first since a rocket was destroyed after lift-off in May. And it was only the second successful major U.S. launch of any kind in six attempts, starting with January's space shuttle Challenger disaster...
Suddenly the U.S. had no way to lift even a medium-size payload into orbit. Temporarily, at least, the nation's vaunted space program has been grounded, its wondrous space future receding. "How bad is it?" asked Bruce Murray, former director of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "It's really terrible --worse than some Government officials realize...
While insisting that it faces no immediate crisis, the Air Force deeply regrets its overreliance on the shuttle. "We have learned a lot, the hard way, from the Challenger mess," admits one general. "It was wrong to mix both civilian and military payloads in that unreliable, complicated system." Air Force Major General Donald Kutyna, a member of the Rogers commission, has estimated that even if shuttles resume operation next summer and make an improbable 18 flights a year, there will be a defense-payload backlog of some 45 needed flights...
...buried on a hilltop some two miles from the high school where she taught. At Arlington National Cemetery, Navy Commander Mike Smith, Challenger's pilot, was buried with military honors on Saturday. Mission Commander Dick Scobee, a former Air Force officer, will also be interred there. The wife of Payload Specialist Gregory Jarvis asked that his remains be cremated so his ashes could be scattered into the Pacific near his home in Hermosa Beach, Calif. A military service will be held at the National Cemetery of the Pacific in Hawaii for Mission Specialist Ellison Onizuka. Mission Specialist Ronald McNair will...
...rocket awaited the final seconds of countdown on its jungle-ringed launching pad in French Guiana. While the Ariane program has generally been a success, three of its 16 missions since 1979 have ended in costly accidents. This time the European Space Agency's unmanned craft carried a payload of two satellites worth a total of $200 million: G-Star II, owned by the U.S. communications company GTE, and Brasilsat S2, a Brazilian counterpart. The countdown ran smoothly until just 4.9 seconds before ignition, but then a sudden computer foul-up scrubbed the mission. Ariane officials hope to try again...