Word: problem
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Dates: during 1990-1990
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...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's construction. "There were at least three cases where there was clear evidence that a problem had developed, and it was missed all three times," said Lew Allen, the director of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the head of the six-member investigating committee that wrote the Hubble report...
...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...
...problem is not food supply -- for one thing, the U.S.S.R. had a record grain crop this year -- but distribution. Farmers have been holding back produce from the state, hoping to make more lucrative cash and barter deals elsewhere. A crumbling transportation system has left crops rotting in the fields or in warehouses. Soviet citizens grumble that many of the delays are deliberate, the work of diehard local bureaucrats seeking to undermine Gorbachev. The very fact that many Soviets have been stockpiling foodstuffs at home, though it provides them a cushion against the future, has only added to the sense...
...Adult Children of Alcoholics primed readers for Beattie's message, which has a special resonance for women who often feel like powerless victims, nurturing everyone but themselves. Beattie offers a list of more than 200 codependent tendencies. The sufferers "feel anxiety, pity and guilt when other people have a problem" and "overcommit themselves." In the book portion titled "The Basics of Self-Care," Beattie suggests that her readers should "feel your own feelings" and "have a love affair with yourself...