Word: rockets
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SIGINT satellites are typically equipped with two large dishes, one for collecting signals and the other for sending them back to earth stations. Earlier rocket-launched versions weighed a little more than a ton. The shuttle, with its greater thrust and ample cargo bay, permits the U.S. to launch a satellite three times as large and boost it to a height of 22,300 miles, where it can stay in "geosynchronous" orbit, maintaining its position over the same spot of the earth...
Kathryn Sullivan, 33, the first American woman to walk in space, on the relative risks of rocket flight and driving in Texas: "Driving on the Houston freeway is more dangerous. I'll take my chances on the launch...
Caught in the middle of the intramural debate is the intelligence community. Its photoreconnaissance specialists and weapons analysts are the gumshoes who stake out the Soviet Strategic Rocket Forces. But these detectives are concerned about protecting their "sources and methods" as well as catching the crooks. The CIA is anxious that the Pentagon hardliners, in their zeal to prosecute the Soviets in public, will give away sensitive intelligence secrets about how much the U.S. knows and how it knows it. Some intelligence experts also interpret the data about Soviet activities as being more ambiguous than the hard-liners want...
...Ariane, simplicity is an Important virtue. The European rocket releases a satellite directly into orbit, dumping the payload at the correct height. The shuttle is launched by conventional rocket and then depends on rocket boosters to maneuver the satellite to its destination. That two-step process, critics say, is so complicated that the possibility of mishap is increased. Shuttle loyalists, however, insist that Ariane lacks the flexibility of the U.S. craft, and they point to last week's retrieval as an example of its wide range of capabilities. "That's the kind of thing...
Perhaps the next avenue of competition between Ariane and the space shuttle will be weight. Ariane V 11 carried a payload of 2.5 tons last week, while Discovery carried only 1.4 tons. The Europeans are planning to put more powerful rocket engines on the next Ariane, scheduled for 1986, allowing it to handle a payload of 4.2 tons. NASA's plans call for a more modest increase in capacity, to between 1.75 and 2 tons by 1986. In addition, Arianespace officials expect that by the mid-1990s they will be able to place heavy loads with great precision into...