Word: titanic
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...brand-new, high-tech business blasted off in the U.S. last week: satellite launching. Martin Marietta, which manufactures Titan-class rockets for the Air Force, signed an agreement with Federal Express to send aloft its ExpressStar communications satellite in 1989. President Reagan had opened the way for the new industry last month, when he an- nounced that NASA will drastically reduce the number of commercial cargoes carried aboard the space shuttle...
...problems will prolong the severe limitations on America's ability to place critical spy satellites into orbit. But a senior Air Force space surveillance officer insisted, "We're not blind up there, not by a long shot." The U.S., he explained reassuringly, has Atlas-Centaur and various versions of Titan rockets "tucked away somewhere" that could be used if the need becomes acute. Said he: "We're O.K." That was the only upbeat note of the week on America's continuing space troubles...
Moreover, some of the qualities that Americans love in Iacocca the gruff, can-do businessman might work against Iacocca the presidential candidate. Could a hard-driving corporate titan, accustomed to speaking his mind and having his way, cope with the subtleties and compromises of American realpolitik? The draft-Iacocca boosters may underestimate the depth of his lifelong love affair with the auto business. He adores the nuts and bolts of it, the marketing strategies, the finite way in which success (or failure) is easily measured. With Chrysler on the rebound, Iacocca harbors impossible dreams of driving his company past Ford...
Grounded by a demoralizing series of failures, the U.S. space program finally got a bit of good news last week. The Air Force announced that a mechanical glitch, rather than a major design flaw, caused its Titan 34D rocket to explode just 700 ft. above its launching pad at California's Vandenberg Air Base last April 18. Loose insulation, the result of shoddy quality control, was blamed for permitting a fatal burn-through. The Air Force predicted that the Titan, capable of lifting up to 35,000-lb. payloads, would be ready to fly again by early next year...
NASA was even warned by outside experts that its booster joints were a serious problem. On March 9, 1984, George Morefield, then chief engineer for United Space Boosters, wrote to Lawrence Mulloy, then the booster manager at Marshall, to explain that the Titan rockets produced by his company for the Air Force had a similar joint problem. Although a thousand of the Titan joints had flown without a failure, Morefield told Mulloy, on a shuttle flight "the potential for failure of the joint is higher...