Word: sunlights
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...poem Locksley Hall, could become 20th century reality if an international group of space buffs has its way. In the U.S. and Canada, in Europe and Asia, teams of scientists and designers are busily completing plans for innovative craft that will travel through space propelled solely by sunlight reflecting off their giant sails. At a meeting this fall of the International Astronautical Federation in Dresden, Germany, at least three of the ships will be picked to compete in a fantastic voyage: an unmanned sailing race to Mars...
...less, will be launched by rocket into Earth orbit. There, high above the atmosphere, each will unfurl a giant sail consisting of wispy plastic coated with a film of aluminum. Positioned by radio signals from the ground, the sails will catch the gentle push of sunlight...
Gentle, indeed. Scientists estimate that photons of sunlight falling on an area the size of a football field exert a pressure equal to the weight of a marble. Yet in the vacuum of space this tiny force is sufficient to accelerate the sailship...
Hubble never had an easy time. After the launch, engineers had to fiddle with stubborn antennas that refused to extend. When the antennas were fixed, the messages that came back to Earth indicated that the spacecraft was wobbling: when it swung from darkness to sunlight, the sun's rays striking Hubble's cold solar panels produced a minor vibration that caused the spacecraft to oscillate slowly. This motion confused instruments that were built to such precision that they could read a license plate 48 km (30 miles) away. NASA software designers are now writing programs to counteract the oscillations...
South Central Los Angeles looks a lot like the rest of the city -- smog- filtered sunlight, palm trees, pastel-colored stucco apartments. It doesn't look like a ghetto. The gang writing on cement walls, criminal samizdat that cops read for news of a planned attack with the expert alacrity of CIA cryptologists, is fastidiously printed; it bears little resemblance to the loopy graffiti of New York City...