Word: launching
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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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...
Letterman's second coming in late night has set off a high-stakes scramble. A week after his debut, Chevy Chase will launch his own talk show on the Fox network. A week after that, Conan O'Brien, the tousle-haired comedy writer plucked from obscurity by producer Lorne Michaels, will try to fill Letterman's old chair on NBC. Leno, feeling the competitive heat, has had his mug plastered on billboards around the country, while Arsenio Hall, despite slipping ratings, is still a hip-hop force to reckon with. Add to that Ted Koppel's sturdy (and frequently...
...Stealth ship. Designed by the same Lockheed "skunk works" that built the F-117A Stealth fighter, the ship has sloping angles and a special coating designed to make it nearly invisible to enemy sonar and radar. Such stealthy boats might someday guard the perimeter of carrier groups, covertly launch surface-to-air missiles or make nighttime troop landings all but undetectable...