Word: sand
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Advocates conjure up visions of death rays flashing across thousands of miles of space to zap Soviet missiles as they rise. Critics counter with derisive pictures of the most supersophisticated Star Wars weaponry foiled by something as simple as grains of beach sand scattered in orbit. Back and forth go the millions of words of argument that have been resounding since Ronald Reagan unveiled his Star Wars plan in 1983. But the essential question raised by all the debate can be put into just three words: Can it work...
...warheads to track and draw a bead on. Just two possibilities: the Soviets could orbit a "space mine" that would blow up near an American satellite and destroy it, or a countersatellite that would discharge a cloud of pellets, capable at orbital speeds of piercing steel, or even beach sand, which could pit and disable laser mirrors. American satellites might be defended against such attacks. But once that kind of cycle begins, says William Shuler, coordinator of S.D.I. research at Livermore, "we are going to be in the counter-countermea sure game forever...
Gold light slants through tall trees and casts long shadows across the tufted stalks of elephant grass as we arrive at the crash site in the late afternoon. Suddenly, the dense undergrowth gives way to an unnatural clearing of dirty gray sand littered with the half-recognizable detritus of the shattered gunship: broken wheel struts, a bent propeller blade, rusted armor plating, scraps of the fuselage. Resembling patches of smudged snow, remnants of the plane's once white fiber-glass insulating material are scattered everywhere. Earlier, crews of olive-clad Laotian soldiers and Americans in T shirts and grimy Levi...
...fleet of government vehicles had arrived to relocate all 60,000 residents of the settlement, and a squad of toughs had been brought in to add muscle to the operation. The rumors proved false, but by dawn, the men of Crossroads, a wretched black squatters' camp in the sand dunes just outside Cape Town, began blocking the roads around their shacks with makeshift barricades of logs, stones, oil drums, old tires and anything else they could find. Then they set the barriers ablaze...
...says Lola Lanza, 41, of Houston. "Now I can just come here on my lunch hour." Jeannie Frazier, 25, who spends $60 a month to cultivate her tan, maintains that a salon is "better than the sun. ( You don't get hot, and you don't get sand all over...