Word: launchful
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None of the spectators at the Army's White Sands Missile Range had ever seen anything quite like it. With a burst of smoke and a flash of light, a 40-ft.- tall white obelisk shuddered briefly, popped off a launch pad and rose 150 ft. over the New Mexico desert. Then it suddenly stopped in midair, moved sideways for 350 ft. and started back down, engines firing all the way. At the last moment, four rodlike pods shot out of the tail to ease the bullet-shaped rocket gently to the ground...
Everything about the DC-X, from its basic components to the speed with which it moved from the computer-aided design screens and onto the launch pad -- the first stage of development took just 18 months -- shows how much was lost in the past two decades, a period in which the U.S. space program was all but stalled. The current fleet of American launch vehicles -- including the shuttle that balked on launch in mid-August and the Titan IV launcher that exploded in midair 11 days before that -- were built from blueprints drawn in the 1960s and '70s, a lifetime...
...replaces the heavy aluminum shell of conventional spacecraft, the rocket is light enough to leap into orbit in a single bound, avoiding the wasteful shedding of expensive booster stages. The DC-X is the world's first fully reusable spacecraft, and its myriad computer systems make it easy to launch and repair. It can be fired off by a crew of three, far fewer than the army of 1,700 needed by the shuttle. Bottom line: the Delta Clipper should be able to carry 10-ton payloads to orbit -- manned or unmanned -- for $500 to $1,000 per lb., compared...
...worst fallout of the explosion was the doubt it created about the reliability of the newly designed Titan IV booster, on which both the Air Force and CIA are heavily dependent. The 12-story-high booster is the only rocket capable of launching a whole family of space-surveillance systems. Martin Marietta has delivered or has under construction about half of the 41 Titan IVs currently on order. Colonel Frank Stirling, director of the Air Force's Titan IV program, immediately grounded two other boosters scheduled for launch and said the delay could last up to a year...
...small particles, each tiny piece traveling at such high speed packs a mighty wallop capable of inflicting severe damage on anything it encounters. Consequently, satellites orbiting above the protective atmosphere during a heavy meteor shower are vulnerable. With this danger in mind, NASA prudently postponed last week's scheduled launch of the shuttle Discovery, which otherwise would have been in orbit during the height of the meteor bombardment. Explained a NASA spokesman: "It's too uncertain to proceed." Astronomers, too, felt concern; they could do nothing to protect the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope from the hurtling Perseids...