Word: shield
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Since President Reagan launched the latest generation of U.S. missile defenses in 1983, envisioning an impregnable missile shield over the U.S., the nation has spent $91 billion (with $58 billion more slated to be spent over the next six years) to protect the country from missile attack. But his ambitious hopes to render nuclear weapons "impotent and obsolete" have been dramatically downsized. Reagan envisioned a network of satellites, sensors and even space-based weapons capable of thwarting a massive missile strike from the Soviet Union or China. But with the Cold War's end, the scale of the threat...
...good thing the threat has diminished, because the technological challenge of building a missile shield has turned out to far more daunting than originally thought. In a series of scripted $100 million tests, 155-pound interceptors have destroyed dummy warheads in just five out of 10 tries between 1999 and 2005. The two most recent tests failed when the boosters designed to lob the interceptors into space failed to launch. After spending a year beefing up quality control, two tests are planned for later this year. Despite the system's shakiness, the White House in 2002 ordered the Pentagon...
...system, however, has failed to impress either its critics or its supporters. Philip Coyle, the Pentagon's chief weapons tester for six years until 2001, says the shield is "a scarecrow defense" of unproven value. Baker Spring of the Heritage Foundation, a long-time backer, bemoans what he sees as Administration foot-dragging. "They are so scared of test failures," he says, "they're not moving forward as fast as they...
Columbia disintegrated during its re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere due to the failure of its heat shield. The shield was damaged during the initial launch by a loose fragment of foam. The space shuttle Discovery’s last mission, which was launched one year ago, also shed foam debris during its launch but landed without major complications...
...from an unvarying menu and sleep in the same room every night. As Alphonse Karr might have mused, "The more one travels, the more one stays in the same place." Indeed, by now, the Interstates' uniform signages - emblazoned with the system's own red-white-and-blue shield icon; others proclaiming speed-limits and upcoming exits; and still others touting McDonald's, Best Western, Exxon, BP, and Wendy's - float through our subconscious like so many branded Jungian archetypes...