Word: planet
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...them beyond the range of human vision, was launched in 1973. Since then three more have been lofted, the latest in July. Instead of traveling along the equator, as do most communications satellites, Landsat 4 circles the earth once every 99 min. via the polar regions. Thus as the planet turns underneath the satellite, Landsat's ever vigilant electronic eyes see a different patch of earth on every pass...
Eyes on the Earth. From their heavenly perspective, satellites can answer many questions about the planet, ranging from the cosmic (Is the protective ozone layer being destroyed?) to the nature of tomorrow's weather. Since meteorological satellites began sending back television-type pictures of cloud formations and weather fronts in the 1960s, there has not been a single death from hurricanes for lack of warning. A new satellite-based typhoon warning system, now being planned by East Asian nations, should save countless lives and drastically reduce the region's $3 billion-a-year storm damage...
Frank Herbert's Dune books dealt with life, war and death on a desert planet. The White Plague (Putnam; $14.95) is set on earth in the grim present. Molecular Biologist John Roe O'Neill, an Irish American in Dublin, sees his wife and children annihilated by an I.R.A. bomb. Vengeance becomes his spur. In a home laboratory he invents a new disease and releases the plague in three nations: Ireland, because his family died there; England, because of British oppression; and Libya, because it operates training schools for terrorists. The disease spreads so quickly that life itself...
...student government. At a time when student government is seeking to veer from its ineffectual, do-nothing past. Evans is one of a very few talking in fresh terms. His grund designs for the Undergraduate Council are only a part of his larger conceptual model--for the planet. "I believe in a unification of the planet within in the U.S. system," he says, with all seriousness. "I see it as the only way to save mankind from its own destruction...
...hall monitor. It serves, however, as the unlikely temple of learning for Matthew Star, who is, literally, a space case. Matt (Peter Barton) is, as the opening narration informs, "a typical American teen-ager." It's just that he also happens to hail from Quadris, a distant planet racked by civil war. He has come to earth to hone his telepathic powers in preparation for the day that he and his guardian (the splendid Louis Gossett Jr.) will return home, unseat the usurpers and restore rightful rule to Quadris...