Word: rocketing
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...gondola. Although it lasts only seconds, the 60 m.p.h. plunge seems to take forever. But the real kick is yet to come. Just as Kaemerer hurtles to within a few feet of the earth and a terrifying impact, the cord stretches taut, recoiling him skyward like a rocket...
...Marines reclaim the U.S. embassy. And he surveyed the surreal traffic jam of bombed vehicles on the highway to Basra. "It was nightmarish," he says, "partly because it was so perfectly familiar." Plus he nearly managed to blow himself up by peering into a booby-trapped box of rocket-propelled grenades on a hotel roof...
...appropriately -- destined for the technological trash heap than the one that came to light last week. According to documents made public by the Federation of American Scientists for the express purpose of torpedoing the scheme, the Pentagon has for several years been secretly developing a new kind of booster rocket -- code-named Timberwind -- that would loft giant weapons into space on short notice. Its power source: an onboard nuclear reactor running at extremely high temperatures and spewing radioactive exhaust directly into the atmosphere...
...Timberwind is simple. Just pump liquid hydrogen through a small nuclear reactor heated to several thousand degrees Fahrenheit. The liquid hydrogen is instantly converted to hydrogen gas, which then blasts out of a nozzle. The resulting thrust is two to three times as great as that generated in conventional rocket engines by the explosive mixture of hydrogen and oxygen. Much larger payloads could thus be lifted into orbit...
...reactions that power atom bombs. Although modern nuclear engineering has virtually eliminated the risk of explosions and meltdowns in such reactors, the problem of disposing of radioactive wastes has not gone away. Nor has the stigma attached to nuclear reactors in general. "If anybody tries launching a reactor-powered rocket," says Theodore Taylor, a veteran designer of nuclear devices, "past demonstrations will pale by comparison...