Word: silo
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...superior would each turn two keys, one to open a box containing codes that would tell them whether higher orders to fire the doomsday weapon were valid, the other to trigger the missile's flight. Standing 24-hr, watches about twice a week in a silo 65 ft. below the Kansas crop lands, the officer led a life of unrelieved tedium. One day he thought of something else...
...space suits, the two men ride up the giant service tower, pause for a last briefing and with a chipper, thumbs-up wave climb into their spacecraft. The ship's three main engines roar to life, gulping supercold liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen out of the huge silo-shaped fuel tank As the engines throttle to 90% of full power the spacecraft and tank bend ever so slightly. When they snap back, two solid-fuel rockets strapped to the silo's sides are ignited. Belching flame and smoke, the entire 18-story-high "stack "-spacecraft fuel tank...
...Columbia seems out of this world even on earth, suggesting something the Wright brothers might have come up with if they had been utterly ignorant of aerodynamics. ("Wilbur, why don't we put some little wings on that silo?" "Let's give it a try, Orville.") Actually, the space shuttle brings to mind a bloated, brick-covered DC-9, except that when "stacked" (as the space people say) on the launch pad with its enormous fuel tank and two crayon-shaped rocket boosters, it forms a surreal ensemble that could easily be passed off as the Intergalactic Hilton...
Today the silo has become something likely to house a nuclear missile. But even in the 1920s, the Agrarians were behind their times. Words Like honor, magnanimity and Tradition with a capital T rise from the pages of I'll Take My Stand. In the midst of the noisy bash of the jazz age, the writers deplore the decline of "manners, conversation, hospitality, sympathy, family life, romantic love." While Yankee highbrows like E.E. Cummings and Edmund Wilson were discovering the seven lively arts, the Agrarians were frowning on movies and imploring the yeomen of Tennessee to switch off their...
...usual campaign fare. In Idaho, Church was criticized for his strong attacks on the CIA, which was fair enough, but he was also falsely accused of disclosing the names of CIA agents and thereby putting their lives in danger. A television spot used against Church showed an abandoned missile silo, making the point that he had voted against military programs. In fact, the Air Force had removed the missile because it was outdated, and Church had voted in favor of the weapon's replacement...