Word: takeoff
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...Britain was braced for the expected shock. At Scotland Yard a special control center was set up to coordinate minute-by-minute reports from an armada of police cars. Squadrons of spotter planes stood fueled and ready for takeoff. Said Transport Minister Ernest Marples: "We kept going during the blitz, and we shall keep going...
...touch; the releases said that Popovich had christened his booster rocket Lastochka (The Swallow) and that Nikolayev had asked the ground station for the latest soccer scores. It was made known that Nikolayev's fellow cosmonauts, as a gag, slipped a sheet of jokes into his logbook before takeoff; the P.R. men announced that Popovich during his orbits was fondling a little cloth picture of Lenin as a child. In Moscow, government flacks passed out banners and cosmonaut photo placards for the jubilant throngs to wave in Red Square...
...recently NASA officially favored Earth Orbit Rendezvous. But now Lunar Orbit Rendezvous has become the most favored mode. Dr. Joseph F. Shea, Holmes's deputy in charge of systems, makes a convincing case for the decision. Each mode, says Shea, was broken down into major elements, starting with takeoff from the earth. To each element was assigned a number expressing its relative hazard as accurately as possible. A very safe element, for instance, might have been given the fraction .9998, while a very dangerous one might have gotten .75, meaning that it would probably fail one out of four...
Less than 24 hours earlier, the chartered jet was roaring down the Orly runway on takeoff. Unaccountably, it failed to lift. The pilot jammed down on the brakes, threw the powerful engines into reverse thrust. But the speed and momentum were too great. The plane rocketed ahead, plowed through a fence, grazed a house, and smashed to pieces in a fiery cloud, killing eight French crew members and 122 passengers. Miraculously, two stewardesses were thrown clear...
...this dodge has its disadvantages too: at the speeds of landing and takeoff, sweptwing ships are hard to handle. Airmen began to yearn for wings that would be long, thick and straight for takeoffs, yet short, thin and swept-back for highspeed flight...