Word: rocketted
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...deterioration caused concern not only among the Lebanese. On several occasions last week the U.S. Marine compound at Beirut International Airport came under rocket and small-arms fire. Sergeant Allen Soifert, 25, a member of the 1,200-strong U.S. contingent in the four-nation Multi-National Force, was patrolling the camp's perimeter in a Jeep when a sniper's bullet hit him in the chest. Soifert died of his wounds shortly thereafter. Half an hour earlier, another Marine had been injured by sniper fire as he drove through the same area. The new casualties brought...
...guerrillas countered with a barrage of automatic machine-gun fire and rocket-propelled grenades and fled for the center of the town, seeking cover and supplies in the courtyards and homes of the villagers. As clay-tile roofs splintered and shattered in a sudden rain of machine-gun fire, the fighter planes unloaded their cargo of 250-lb. bombs, sending bottles and statuettes of saints flying from shelves and demolishing many adobe homes. Fleeing civilians were gunned down in the indiscriminate fire from the jets and helicopters circling overhead. Said a stunned villager: "What can we do? The bullets come...
...account remained sketchy, the details not altogether clear. One morning early last week, according to U.S. intelligence sources, a booster rocket exploded into flames on a launching pad at the space center in Tyuratum, in the Central Asian Soviet republic of Kazakhstan. Atop the rocket was a manned Soyuz space capsule bound for a rendezvous with the orbiting space station Salyut 7. Luckily, the safeguards apparently worked without a hitch, and the two or three spacemen aboard survived the disaster...
...rocket either exploded or caught fire when its fuel tank, containing some 270 tons of kerosene and liquid oxygen, suddenly ignited and turned the launching pad into a flaming ball. In such emergencies, the capsule, its crew snugly strapped inside, blasts away from the pad within milliseconds after the blowup. The rocket tip arcs up to an altitude of several thousand feet, where the capsule then rolls out of its casing (much like a tennis ball out of a tin can) and parachutes safely back to earth...
...cosmonauts probably did not escape without some injuries. When the capsule shoots away from the rocket, its occupants suffer a terrific jolt comparable to the one received in a car hit from the rear at high speed. Besides conducting a time-consuming investigation into how the accident happened, the Soviets will have to rebuild the launching pad, one of three at the facility. The estimated cost of repairs, including underground fuel lines: between $250 million and $500 million...