Word: ssi
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Elderly widows who have never worked fare even worse. They rely on Supplementary Security Income (SSI), which pays only about $4800 per year in many states...
What once seemed a sci-fi folly is now, by Hannah's reckoning, a plausible venture. He and his 56 fellow investors in SSI, nearly all oil-industry friends, have already run through $6 million, and must raise at least another $15 million before their venture can earn a cent. The business plan: putting telecommunications and earth-scanning satellites into orbit, at about $5 million a shot, for companies that want a rocket all to themselves or do not want to wait for cheaper space on NASA'S booked-up space shuttle. Hannah says a dozen energy companies...
...SSI investors are confident that the Federal Aviation Administration will formally approve such launches, since the Government seems willing to surrender its U.S. rocket monopoly. Says a NASA official: "We're happy as hell. We want out of the launch business...
...comparison with NASA, SSI is a relaxed, unpretentious operation. "Mission control" consists of a few mobile homes, and Hannah's wife picks up litter around the compound. Last week's rocket watchers, snacking on shrimp, seemed like typical Texas partygoers. Indeed, said one cheery NASA alumnus, champagne glass in hand...
...this at a Government launch site." The site was, in fact, on a 19,000-acre ranch lent by Oil Mogul Toddie Lee Wynne, 85, one of SSI's main financial angels, who died a few hours before liftoff. With the, countdown under way, a launching-pad engineer wandered out to Conestoga I and, with a felt-tipped pen, scribbled on the rocket, GOD BLESS YOU, TODDIE LEE WYNNE. You can't do that at a Government launch site either...