Word: preflight
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Referring to the avalanche of documents concerning shuttle safety that the space agency passes from desk to desk, Rogers scolded some top NASA launch officials, "You eliminate the element of good judgment and common sense." Frustrated by conflicting accounts of positions taken at crucial preflight meetings, Rogers asked with cutting incredulity, "Does everybody know what everybody else is recommending?" He wondered aloud why those involved had not been required to take clear stands on life-and-death safety issues and had not had their positions recorded. And, Rogers concluded, he was certain the members of the presidential commission agreed with...
That conviction was based largely on testimony indicating how NASA officials had dealt with the preflight concerns expressed by two of the shuttle's prime contractors: Morton Thiokol, which makes the solid-fuel boosters that are the main focus of the search for a cause of the disaster, and Rockwell International, which manufactures the orbiter. Officials and engineers of both companies insisted that they had opposed the launch, at least initially, because of the cold weather and ice at the pad. But the NASA officials who heard the complaints contended that the objections had never been raised as forcefully...
They were, all of them, human like us. Their courage and ambition took root in the familiar, sustained by circumstances and routines that everyone can recognize. On that last morning they were in preflight isolation but still a part of us. They got up and dressed, had breakfast and went to work...
...native Poland built before his arrival in Warsaw last week, TIME correspondents were reporting on the activities of both the visitor and the visited. In Rome, Bonn Bureau Chief Roland Flamini, who as a Rome correspondent covered John Paul's 1978 election, followed the Pontiff's preflight preparations, then accompanied him on the trip to Poland. Paris Correspondent Thomas A. Sancton, a former associate editor who wrote many of TIME's stories about Solidarity, including the 1981 Man of the Year cover on Lech Walesa, was in Poland, an eyewitness to the spontaneous demonstrations along the Pope...
...engine lubricant can be checked. The plugs that were returned to Flight 855 lacked the O ring seals, each of which costs about 10?, causing an oil leak under high-pressure operation, which eventually led to the near fatal engine seizures. Alarmingly, the jet had passed a preflight inspection test that uses air pressure to force the engines up to starting speed precisely to ensure that the oil pressure is normal. Making the en ire incident even more painful from Eastern management's point of view was the fact that the company had recently granted...