Word: payloads
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Experts point out that the Air Force drawing may be somewhat misleading. Several details, like the placement of the engine-exhaust outlets, have been deliberately masked. Others, including crew size and maximum payload, along with such flight characteristics as range, airspeed and cruising altitude, remain strictly classified. The Air Force does acknowledge, however, that the plane is going to cost more than projected. The fleet of 132 bombers, originally priced at $36.6 billion, could cost twice as much by the time it is airborne in the 1990s...
Sometime next year, when the Soviets launch one of their Proton rockets toward their space station Mir, a pharmaceutical experiment on board could mark a new cooperative era in space. The package, a crystal-growing project, will be the first commercial payload put into orbit for a U.S. company by the Soviets. Glavkosmos, the Soviet civilian space agency, has agreed to conduct several such experiments aboard Mir under a contract with Payload Systems, a Wellesley, Mass., consulting firm. American firms that want to explore low- gravity manufacturing and other space-based technologies are turning to the Soviets because...
Robins claims she discovered a self-defeating Unisys procedure: instead of halting other operations while both the main and backup software were tested, the contractor permitted NASA to make additional changes in payload and other shuttle flight plans as the testing proceeded. While this saved a three-week hold for each test, she insists that it rendered the results meaningless, since the software could not be adjusted and tested simultaneously...
Last week's launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base ended the string of failures. The rocket carried into orbit a secret military payload that independent experts believe to be a KH-11 photo-reconnaissance satellite, enabling the U.S. to monitor Soviet compliance with arms agreements...
...first stage separated and dropped to earth as planned. At nearly 14,000 m.p.h. and 60 miles up, the second stage fell away and 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...