Word: weighting
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Noelle's parents were concerned. Their 21-month-old daughter had failed to gain any weight in nearly six months. Such failure to thrive is usually the result of illness, poverty or neglect, but Dr. Michael Pugliese found that the child was basically healthy and the couple well-to-do and doting. In fact, the parents were so committed to caring for Noelle (not her real name) that they had placed her on a stringent low-fat diet in an effort to ensure that she did not become obese. Told that the strict regimen was stunting the toddler's growth...
...Americans did not suppose these were the harbingers of a U.S. craze. But by the end of the 1970s joggers were everywhere, all seemingly in training for the marathon. Other citizens, plunging into alternate activities, were equally fervid. Swimmers boasted of laps completed, cyclists of long-distance touring, and weight lifters of pounds pressed. Today Americans live in a land where fit is proper. Strut your sweat. The majority, who remain woefully unfit, are now the ones who feel out of step; shamefacedly, they even outfit the body as if they exercised it. Togged out in sneaks and sweats, they...
These questions have been largely obscured by the national debate about the technical feasibility of Star Wars weapons and the political and military , consequences of building an antimissile shield. Yet a key problem of SDI from its inception has been the weight and quantity of equipment that would have to be put into space. The hardware would vary enormously according to what types of weapons were selected for deployment. It makes a big difference, for example, whether laser beams are generated by millions of pounds of chemicals aboard satellites or produced on earth and bounced off mirrors in space...
Even the minimal forecasts, though, are striking. When they were operating, U.S. shuttles and one-way rockets probably lifted no more than 500,000 lbs. per year (the exact weight is secret) of military payloads into space, at an estimated cost of $3,000 per lb. In the first year of deployment of a relatively primitive Star Wars system, according to Lieut. Colonel Louis Kouts, Air Force deputy for space plans and policy, some 2.6 million lbs. of SDI weapons, sensors and other gear would have to be rocketed up. That, says Kouts, would grow to 4.4 million lbs. annually...
...much higher: 4 million lbs. per year to start and vastly more than that if, for example, satellites were armored and made maneuverable to protect them against Soviet attack. SDI officials, says John Pike of the Federation of American Scientists, "are looking at increasing their annual to-orbit weight by a factor of ten to 50 times, and that assumes survivability apart from armor. If they go to armor, the numbers quickly become bizarre as opposed to just daunting...