Word: tethers
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...supposed to be another space spectacular, the kind NASA used to pull off like clockwork: astronauts aboard the shuttle Atlantis had plans to dangle a half-ton satellite on a 20.1-km (12 1/2-mile) tether, forming the biggest single orbiting object in history. But like so many of the space agency's ambitious projects lately, this one didn't quite work out. The Italian-made satellite rose properly from the shuttle on a 10-m (39-ft.) boom, but the astronauts couldn't pull out its auxiliary power cord. When they finally got the cord out and began unreeling...
...radar-balloon perimeter that the U.S. Customs Service has been trying to raise along the Mexican border to detect drug smuggling is not flying high. Last December one of the Texas-based gas bags broke loose from its tether near Eagle Pass and began drifting south, alarming federal officials with the prospect of an international incident with Mexico. A shift in the wind pushed the device back into Texas, where it was deflated by remote control. In April a balloon at Marfa, Texas, was buffeted on the ground by winds and self- destructed. Another balloon that...
...bomb bay work is going on to reconstruct the single hook used to suspend and release the bomb. A normal double hook for bombs was abandoned by the mission planners, who feared, if one malfunctioned, the armed bomb might dangle in the rack like hell on a tether. You remember the day 44 years ago on a college campus when the news came of the Enola Gay's successful drop and the public dawning of the nuclear age, how you sat up most of the summer night talking and wondering...