Word: rocketeer
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Gemini astronauts of the 1960s never much cared for flying into space atop a Titan 2 rocket. Originally built as a military missile, the Titan had a tendency to leap off the pad and scream into orbit with a suddenness that plastered even the most hardened pilot against his seat. Punishing as the Titans of the 1960s were, however, there was one thing you could say for them: they got where they were going...
...Rocket scientists and Wall Street analysts characterized the catastrophes as a spectacular run of bad luck. But the losses--the launch vehicles and the satellites they were carrying cost at least $3.5 billion--come at a time when the industry is simultaneously consolidating, introducing new technology and trying to boost the number of annual launches to meet rising demand. That's not a prescription for smooth sailing. "It could be a string of bad luck," says Pierre Chao, an analyst for Morgan Stanley Dean Witter. "Or they are doing so many launches that something slipped...
Just what that something was may be hard to pinpoint. Of the six launch fiascoes, three involved new, profit-driven rockets: the bulked-up Delta 3, with twice the lift-off muscle of its Delta 2 ancestor; and the Athena 2, a smaller rocket with less propulsive oomph but a bargain price tag. The most recent Titan flub appears to involve misfirings of the rocket's upper stage, a $1.23 billion mistake that may have been caused by badly loaded software. Other miscues have included everything from an electrical short, which caused another Titan to explode, to faulty guidance, which...
...that they probably have a little breathing room before things really start to close in. Satellite makers know that space flight is a tricky business, and they must factor in a 5% to 10% launch-failure rate. And hitching a ride into space aboard some other country's rocket is not easy. Russia knows the space game, but federal quotas limit the number of U.S. satellites that can ride Russian rockets. Europe's Ariane provides a far better alternative, but that rocket appears to be a victim of its own success, booked all but solid for the immediate future...
...customers are making it known that they won't put up with failure for long. Recently the U.S. Air Force informally approached NASA about launching national-security payloads aboard the shuttle. And last week the Administration apparently okayed the launch of a private satellite aboard a Chinese Long March rocket...