Word: flaws
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Dates: during 1990-1990
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...atmosphere of this first one-act is depressing, and its moody manner alienated many of the small children in attendance. This is not of itself a flaw--the murky moral conflict and mediocre acting hurt this production more than the play's tone does. Only Lithgow, as the black-clad, cigarette-smoking Death, brings vigor to his character, but his grave voice fits the part more exactly than his mannerisms...
That was the case with the ill-fated Hubble Space Telescope, according to a remarkably frank investigative report issued last week by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The flaw that crippled the telescope's primary mirror was not obvious until after the instrument was launched last spring. Yet technicians at the company that made the mirror had indications of trouble long before the telescope went into space -- and apparently never told the design team about the disturbing signs. Meanwhile, managers at NASA who had responsibility for the Hubble project paid little attention to the details of the telescope...
There was more than enough time to catch the telescope's flaw. Rough grinding of the mirror began in 1978, final polishing was not finished until 1981, and the completed telescope sat on the ground for four years after the space shuttle program was disrupted by the Challenger explosion. The mirror's manufacturer, Connecticut-based Perkin-Elmer Corp.,* told NASA that the standards of precision established for the mirror were not only met but exceeded. The only problem was that the mirror had been painstakingly polished into the wrong shape...
What was worse, the company's reliance on this system was absolute. Though backup analyses pointed to a major flaw in the mirror, stated the report, these "indicators of error were discounted at the time as being themselves flawed." The evidence of the problem was never analyzed in detail by the engineers and scientists most qualified to do so. NASA accepted Perkin-Elmer's decision to rely solely on the precision of the template, when instead the space agency should have been alert "to the fragility of the process and the possibility of gross error...
...something immature in his sexual development had him going obsessively after women. And something childish in every mind rejects imperfection in heroes. King's greatness came from somewhere else entirely, a deeper part of the forest. No character is flawless, and if it were flawless, that would be its flaw. Everything in nature, Emerson wrote, is cracked...