Word: space
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...timing of last week's announcements reflected mounting external pressure on the beleaguered agency. The Galileo mission has an approaching launch "window" that will last only six weeks in the fall of 1989. As for the space station, NASA Administrator James Fletcher faced the growing impatience of firms competing for contracts that had each spent about $75 million for preliminary design proposals...
...space station, which could eventually cost up to $30 billion, would serve as a laboratory for scientific, commercial and possibly military research, as well as a base for planetary exploration. Last week contracts for its construction went to Boeing ($750 million), McDonnell Douglas ($1.9 billion), Rockwell International ($1.6 billion) and General Electric ($800 million). Nineteen shuttle missions -- only six fewer than have been flown since the program began in 1981 -- would be required to carry the station's 200 tons of hardware into orbit...
That daunting prospect is one reason why practically no one takes seriously NASA's contention that the space station could become operational as early as 1995. Says former Astronaut Donald ("Deke") Slayton, head of a private launch firm based in Houston: "The law of averages says it won't happen." Moreover, many scientists remain opposed to the concept of a manned station, contending that most of the experiments NASA has in mind can be conducted on unmanned missions...
...pressures to get an American laboratory of some kind into space are strong. By a sobering coincidence, on the day after Fletcher made his contract announcement, the Soviet crew commander marked his 300th consecutive day aboard Mir, the world's only space station...
...would have sacrificed the Pershing II but allowed the U.S. a stripped-down deployment of cruise missiles to counter a residual force of SS-20s. Cruise missiles fly subsonically at low altitudes and are vulnerable to enemy air defenses. The Pershing II ballistic missiles arc to the edge of space and can strike targets inside western Russia in a matter of minutes. The deal was repudiated by both men's home offices. It was shot down in Washington (particularly by Perle) because it meant giving up the Pershing II, and in Moscow because it meant allowing even...