Word: venusized
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...paddle-wheeled ball that last week rose from the surface of the earth and vaulted through space. The destiny of Pioneer V lay in the unknown void-as far as 186 million miles away-in a 527 million-mile sun-circling orbit between the earth and Venus (see SCIENCE). And of all the machinery thrown into the heavens since the space age began only 29 months ago, Pioneer V alone has a voice that will thunder through history. On earth, scientists press buttons that ask questions, and Pioneer V will deliver the answers, from perhaps 50 million miles away...
Pioneer V, part of a National Aeronautics and Space Administration experiment headed by rumpled, energetic Dr. Abe Silverstein, 51, was originally intended to send a probe to the close vicinity of Venus. The best time for the launch would have been last June. But the payload was not ready then, and a launch scheduled for December was canceled because of instrument failure. By March, Venus was far away, but NASA decided to shoot anyway. Though the Venus probe will never probe Venus intimately, it can (if all goes well) gather vital information about interplanetary space...
...alternates appalling melodrama with grisly farce, is now a kind of rancidly self-communing Hamlet, now Venus in a gold wig. The more inhumanly homicidal his acts become, the more inherently suicidal is his mood. Boundless egotism shatters into nihilism, limitless freedom festers into self-imprisonment, until Caligula's assassination at the hands of conspirators is really a welcomed assignation with death...
...Johnson himself. Bozzy's vagarious search for a wife, described in the previous volume, has succeeded, and for the moment at least he is well-behaved. When he visits London in 1772 without his wife, he is tempted by "a variety of fine girls, genteelly dressed, all wearing Venus's girdle, all inviting me to amorous intercourse." But with a heroic mustering of conscience, he resists the flourish of strumpets and confines himself to conversation and claret...
...humans should be cautious about visits to other planets, Lederberg warned. Living microbes introduced from earth might quickly destroy any primitive exo-creatures. Conversely, the first space traveler who returns from Mars or Venus may bring with him fast-multiplying forms of extraterrestrial life. "The introduction of foreign organisms," said Lederberg, "might have disastrous consequences to our health, agriculture, economy or comfort." He urged that all humans landed on foreign planets be quarantined there until they are sure that no exo-pestilence will ride with them back to the earth...