Word: launchful
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Deep below ground in 100 concrete launch-control centers across the U.S., teams of paired Air Force officers keep watch over the U.S. ICBM force. Next month that stressful, tedious duty will take on a new complexion. For the first time, the military will permit men and women to share the 24-hour shifts...
...less undertake new ventures. Though the shuttle's return to service is still at least six months away, NASA officials last week managed to look beyond that crippling disaster and announced plans for two ambitious programs for the next decade. In 1989, the space agency declared, it will finally launch its long-delayed unmanned Galileo project to Jupiter, a 2.3 billion-mile mission that is expected to last eight years. NASA also awarded four contracts for the construction of the long-planned space station that will serve as the nation's first permanent outpost in space...
While the projects each offer exciting prospects, they amount to something less than the fully rethought agenda that many space experts have urged on NASA. For one thing, both depend on the restored health of the shuttle program, which will be used to launch the Galileo mission to Jupiter and provide transport for the components of the space station. For another, both the space station and the shuttle program confront major budget uncertainties...
...timing of last week's announcements reflected mounting external pressure on the beleaguered agency. The Galileo mission has an approaching launch "window" that will last only six weeks in the fall of 1989. As for the space station, NASA Administrator James Fletcher faced the growing impatience of firms competing for contracts that had each spent about $75 million for preliminary design proposals...
That daunting prospect is one reason why practically no one takes seriously NASA's contention that the space station could become operational as early as 1995. Says former Astronaut Donald ("Deke") Slayton, head of a private launch firm based in Houston: "The law of averages says it won't happen." Moreover, many scientists remain opposed to the concept of a manned station, contending that most of the experiments NASA has in mind can be conducted on unmanned missions...