Word: tethers
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...space station starting at the end of next year. The project is expected to be completed early next century. The six- hour spacewalk had an element of danger as Atlantis was docked to Mir and could not immediately dash after Godwin or Clifford in the unlikely event that their tether broke. NASA took extra precautions, giving the two astronauts jet packs in case their lifelines broke. Also, the hatches between shuttle Atlantis and Mir were closed prior to the spacewalk to allow for a quick shuttle getaway in the unlikely event that a tether broke and the jet pack failed...
...David Foster Wallace's marathon send-up of humanism at the end of its tether is worth the effort. There is generous intelligence and authentic passion on every page, even the overwritten ones in which the author seems to have had a fit of graphomania. Wallace is definitely out to show his stuff, a virtuoso display of styles and themes reminiscent of William Burroughs, Thomas Pynchon and William Gaddis. Like those writers, Wallace can play it high or low, a sort of Beavis-and-Egghead approach that should spell cult following at the nation's brainier colleges...
...wake of Trieste's successful dive, the number of submersibles expanded dramatically. The American Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution's workhorse, the three-person Alvin (still in operation), was launched in 1964. And the first robots-on-a-tether--the so-called remotely operated vehicles, or ROVS--were developed several years later. The Soviet Union, France and Japan began building their own submersibles, either for military or scientific reasons, and for the first time scientists could systematically collect animals, plants, rocks and water samples rather than study whatever they could dredge up in collection baskets lowered from the surface...
Center projects to be completed within the next five to ten years include tether systems which are analogous to satellites on strings, a device called Spartan which produces artificial eclipses, an infrared telescope and several specialized satellites...
...stretching the copper-cored, shoelace-thin tether within the earth's magnetic field, NASA scientists expected to generate up to 5,000 volts of electricity. Ultimately, such tethers could not only power spacecraft but also secure counterweights that could be set spinning to create artificial gravity...