Word: solarized
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...futility of taking technological shortcuts and the agility of men working in space to remedy unexpected ailments. When Skylab was launched by a Saturn 5 booster rocket on May 14, 1973, a large section of its meteoroid and heat shield ripped away, taking one of its prematurely extended solar-energy wings with it. A second wing jammed in a retracted position. The craft both overheated in orbit and was dangerously underpowered. But in the space age's first salvage mission, on May 25, 1973, Astronauts Charles ("Pete") Conrad Jr. and Joseph Kerwin entered the overheated space lab and rigged...
Ironically, despite NASA'S concentration on solar research with Skylab, the agency's failure to anticipate the extent of sunspot activity during the vehicle's years in orbit contributed substantially to the craft's death. Russian scientists as well as America's own National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration had predicted considerable solar disturbances, including great magnetic storms and solar flares. When they erupted in 1977 and 1978, they warmed the gases in the earth's outer atmosphere, increasing the drag on Skylab. Never fully powered because of its lost solar wing and failing batteries, the craft began to slip ever...
...research experiments involving less than 200 Ibs. and measuring under 5 cu. ft. Two early takers: Film Makers Steven Spielberg and Michael Phillips (Close Encounters of the Third Kind) for a project that they are still keeping secret. Eventually the shuttle may be used for far bolder enterprises: assembling solar power satellites that can collect the sun's rays and beam that concentrated energy down to earth; erecting giant antennas that could revolutionize global communications; and putting together still other spaceships that can carry cargo and people to higher orbits, to the moon or beyond...
...have bequeathed the solar system to our children, not our great-grandchildren, and they will be duly thankful. At the very least, this gift will enable them to look back on such transient crises as energy and material shortages with amused incredulity...
...moon is only the offshore island of earth. We now know, thanks to our robot explorers, that the other children of the sun are more fantastic places than we had ever dreamed. The Voyager reconnaissance of Jupiter's giant moons has revealed what is virtually a whole new solar system of baffling complexity...