Word: probe
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Time was, Mars was a busy place. Everybody, it seemed--or at least everybody at NASA--wanted to fling something the Red Planet's way. First there were Mariner probes whizzing through the Martian neighborhood, then Mariner probes orbiting the planet. Next there was a Viking probe that actually landed on the surface, and another followed a few months later. Before long, so the thinking went, the unmanned probes would have surveyed the whole planet, and the manned missions could at last begin...
Designed to survive on its own millions of miles from home, a probe only 6 ft. long can cost $1 billion--more than half the sticker price of a space shuttle. The problem is that even expensive ships can go south on you, which is just what happened in 1993, when the Mars Observer--a spacecraft that was NASA's only attempted Mars mission since 1976--apparently blew an aneurysm in a fuel line and spiraled off into space. Goldin decided that such Cadillac probes should be replaced with more-modest ones: stripped-down ships made of components already...
Instead, Jewell became the subject of an investigation that dragged on for three months, even though not one piece of physical evidence was produced. And his interrogators at the FBI will themselves face an intense internal probe, which could last a year or longer. The problems in the Jewell case only add to the bureau's recent difficulties. Last week E. Michael Kahoe, a senior FBI official, pleaded guilty to having shredded an embarrassing internal report about the mishandling of the siege at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, where the wife and son of white supremacist Randy Weaver were killed...
Wideman's selections complement his own work which relies strongly on the element of the imagination. The former Penn professor is the author of a number of provocative novels, most notably Brothers and Keepers, Philadelphia Fire and The Cattle Killing, all of which probe the depths of the imagination, creating a fantasy world where the past is recreated and shaped according to the author's unique vision. The stories selected by Wideman also tend to rely on the element of the fantastic and many look to the past, recreating historical narratives...
...rudimentary bomb training warranted attention. Jewell was a valid suspect, though his name should not have been leaked to the press so quickly. But without the media's subsequent attack, Jewell's reputation would not have been so permanently scarred. If they had been as skeptical of the FBI probe in July as they are now in late October, we might have known of Richard Jewell's innocence much earlier. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and other newspapers were right to print the FBI's leak and to cover the progress of the investigation, but when they took Richard Jewell...