Word: spectacularly
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...best possible staff, NASA has a problem it never faced in the free-spending 1960s. Nowadays, every new mission has to be sold to a skeptical and tightfisted Congress. The agency has found that legislators -- and the aerospace contractors who lobby them -- prefer big, complex projects that promise spectacular scientific returns. These also carry the greatest risk, but NASA has understandably played down the chance of failure. Perhaps it's time for a more sophisticated approach: the men and women who run the nation's space program could take a lesson from the politicians and learn the fine...
Sensing an untold story, Sidey hit the rails to interview people at all levels of the freight industry. He rode a Conrail train up the west side of the Hudson River Valley, getting an engineer's-eye view of spectacular scenery; half a continent away, he observed the switchings, couplings and uncouplings at a vast freight yard in North Platte, Nebraska. These experiences called up memories of his Iowa childhood and his long romance with railroads: "I remember as a four-year-old hearing the train whistle on a winter morning and pressing my nose against an icy windowpane...
...drool over the alluring brochures. Ah, the pristine beaches. Elegant cafes. Spectacular mountain scenery. It all sounds great. Then you look at the fine print: the beaches are in the poverty-racked Gaza Strip, the cafes in bombed-out Dubrovnik, the mountains in war-torn eastern Turkey. They have got to be kidding...
...advertising their supposed charms. "Be a Chinese soldier for a day" gives a whole new meaning to the phrase "military tour." "Visit Shibam, famous for its exquisite Yemenite architecture." Oops, forgot to mention the bands of armed tribesmen who routinely kidnap Westerners. "Revel in the spectacular scenery of Vietnam's China Beach." Regret that most hotels are Stalinist-style tenements built by the Soviets...
...spectacular fireworks high over Southern California last week couldn't have come at a worse time for the Central Intelligence Agency. Just as Congress was debating the size of the intelligence budget for 1994, $1 billion worth of spying equipment disappeared in a flash above Vandenberg Air Force Base -- the costliest space accident since the 1986 Challenger disaster. A new Titan IV rocket carrying a supersecret intelligence-satellite system inexplicably blew up two minutes after launch. Space-spying expert Jeffrey Richelson, author of America's Secret Eyes in Space, called it a "huge embarrassment for the intelligence community...