Word: vaporous
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...uncomfortable fuel, liquid hydrogen. Space engineers admire LH2 because it provides better than one-third more thrust than kerosene, but it is hell to handle. It is so light (7% the weight of water) that it requires enormous tanks, elaborately insulated to keep the hydrogen from flashing to vapor. A long list of new materials had to be developed that would not lose their strength at the chilling touch...
...only the beginning, say satellite meteorologists. Future satellites will do even better. They will measure temperatures of the ground and the atmosphere. They will tell how dense the clouds are, and how high. They will show clouds on the dark side of the earth and measure changes of water vapor in the air. When all this new information is analyzed continuously by quick-thinking computers, meteorologists will at last be able to watch all the world's weather all the time...
...Webster now accepts "to happen" as a synonym, but gives "to emit moisture, vapor, perfume, etc." as the first definition...
...comets form, molecule by molecule, out of frozen gases beyond the outermost planets. They pick up bits of dust and start drifting ever so slowly toward the distant sun. When they gather speed as they approach the sun, their surface gets hotter, turning some of the frozen gas to vapor and freeing some of the dust to form the comets' glowing heads and tails. When an old comet disintegrates, it leaves bits of fluff to wander in space...
Next morning Cooper was back in his Faith 7 capsule. As he lay on his back, the ten-story-high launch assembly swayed gently. The thin skin of the Atlas popped and clinked with expansion and contraction. Vapor whistled with pitch-pipe tones through the liquid oxygen release valve. Gyros purred-and, to the astonishment of control-center monitors, Cooper's respiration rate dropped to twelve per minute. Astronaut Cooper apparently was taking a catnap...