Word: showering
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Taking a shower may be a waste in the desert but not in a city. Blowing up a $16 million rocket to get to the moon may seem wasteful to some-but it scarcely is, in view of what space exploration contributes to science and the economy, not to say the human spirit. War is undoubtedly wasteful, not only in matériel but also in the irretrievable waste of lost lives. Yet even here, it is a question of values-most American wars have been fought for human causes and values that its citizens considered no waste, whether...
Astronomers are hoping for a spectacle reminiscent of 1833, when about 10,000 meteors per hour were visible over the eastern U.S. at the peak of the shower. That year, awed viewers, aroused from sleep by the bright flashes, described shooting stars "falling from the sky like snowflakes." Many thought that the end of the world had come...
...earth circles the sun, it cuts through 1866 I's trail every November slicing into the thin stream of widely dispersed debris that produces the Leonid showers. In 1833, the earth's course took it through the middle of the main cluster of Leonids that follow closely behind the parent comet; it encountered a vastly larger number of meteoroids than usual. Just 33 years later, in November 1866, there was another fiery but less spectacular shower; the main cluster orbiting the sun once every 33¼ years was still three months away...
This November, a full four orbits after 1833, things should be different. The main swarm of Leonids should be back at the same point where they were intercepted by the earth 133 years ago. Astronomers who have predicted a substantial, if not spectacular shower, are hopeful that the earth will again pass directly through 1866 I's biggest clump of orbiting debris...
Comet Composition. During the shower, the Air Force will launch an Aerobee rocket equipped with a "Venus Flytrap" nose cone. While the rocket is rising to a peak altitude of 117 miles, four arms will extend out of the nose cone to catch the Leonid meteoroids, entering the earth's atmosphere at a speed of 162,000 m.p.h.; then the arms fold into the nose cone, which will fall back to earth carrying specimens that will help scientists determine the composition of the comet...