Word: rocketeers
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...memorable scenes from the second half of the book is his portrayal of a teleconference which took place the night before the launch between engineers at Morton Thiokol, makers of the shuttle's solid rocket boosters, and NASA officials. Thiokol's engineers spent almost an hour explaining why they believed that cold temperatures at Cape Canaveral would impair the performance of their now infamous O-rings. The Thiokol engineers voted unanimously to recommend against launching...
...thundered into space last week, the tall, slender rocket looked like hundreds of satellite boosters launched by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Despite a drizzling rain, the blast-off put a marine observation satellite into orbit without a hitch. The launch pad, though, was not in California or Florida. It was on Tanegashima Island, and the rocket bore on its side, in prominent black letters, a single word: NIPPON...
Much smaller U.S. operators are also reaching for the skies. Robert Truax, a former Navy engineer, built a rocket in his Saratoga, Calif., backyard four years ago, and hopes to be the first private businessman to launch commercial cargo into space, possibly from Cape Canaveral. Entrepreneur George Koopman's Menlo Park, Calif., firm, American Rocket, is conducting flight tests at Edwards Air Force Base in Southern California. Like Truax, Koopman says the hardest part about starting a space-transport firm is raising enough money. Says he: "I'm still out there beating the bushes for funds...
...what has come to be called "phased deployment" -- meaning putting in place a simple system of smart rocks as a prelude to a more advanced system -- base their optimism on the success of last year's Delta 180 demonstration; in this experiment, a space vehicle launched on a Delta rocket tracked and targeted another rocket and then maneuvered to collide with a satellite. The demonstration, however, was somewhat rigged: the rocket orbits were preprogrammed, and a reflector on the target rocket magnified its image 1,000 times. Nevertheless, Air Force Lieut. General James Abrahamson, SDI's director, argues that...
...unsuccessful attempts were made to break the blockade. In the first, four occupants of a truck loaded with flour were killed when they tried to drive the vehicle into Burj el-Barajneh and were blasted with Amal rockets. Militia officials claimed that the truck was also carrying ammunition for the P.L.O. Then on Friday, after the Amal had agreed to a cease-fire, an Iranian envoy riding in a small U.N. convoy of trucks and an ambulance was killed when the vehicles were halted by rocket and machine-gun fire just outside the camp's main gate. Finally...