Booster Rocket

By selecting the best of the current inventory of booster-rocket parts, the space shuttle could fly in a couple of months using a volunteer crew of military personnel for a military mission. Flying the shuttle in warm weather probably poses no greater risk than taking off or landing a fighter plane on an aircraft carrier, which is done every day. Military satellites are already behind schedule. One of the satellites is too large to be launched by the Titan rocket. It can only be launched by the shuttle and is urgently needed to monitor Soviet activity.

The Soviet Union will make a second attempt at launching its space shuttle on its unmanned maiden flight within the next few days, Moscow Radio said yesterday. The first try on Oct. 29 was postponed just 51 seconds before takeoff when a platform failed to swing clear. "The launch and test flight, with sytems on automatic, will take place in the coming days," Moscow Radio said, without specifying a date for blastoff. Scientists said soon after the countdown was stopped that they saw the problem as minor.

NASA aborted an attempt to set a new speed record for an aircraft yesterday, blowing up a rocket that was to help launch the unmanned X-43A jet. The jet had been scheduled to make its maiden flight over the Pacific Ocean. A B-52 carried it and a Pegasus rocket over the ocean, where the rocket would have ignited and boosted the experimental plane to about 100,000 feet before releasing it. But the booster rocket was ordered destroyed seconds after being released from the belly of the B-52.

The head of the U.S. space program predicted yesterday that "it won't take a very long time" to correct whatever caused Challenger to explode, and NASA sources here indicated another shuttle launch might be technically possible as early as June. Citing 24 successful shuttle launches prior to last week, National Aeronautics and Space Administration acting administrator William Graham said, "The overall configuration and design we believe to be fundamentally sound, and we believe it won't take a very long time to get this problem corrected.

"In a moment, the exciting conclusion of Showdown of the Celebrity Cannibals, but first this message . . . " "Howdy, friends! Friends, do you love comfort? Do you love security? Do you love Al Gore? "Well, welcome to Bill Clinton's Kut-rate Missile Defense Systems. I'm Bill Clinton, and I'm here to tell you about our new, U.S.-government-certified interceptor missile. "She's a beauty, folks - comes complete with X-band radar tracking system, booster rocket and lots of defense contracts for Lockheed, Raytheon, Boeing and the rest.

If 3-D is to become the wave of the future in Hollywood, it will not be because of "Fly Me To The Moon. " The technology may be updated, but the story of flies hitching a ride to the moon on the Apollo 11 mission needs a booster rocket, or something. In "Fly Me," a trio of boy flies, bored with their life at a Florida garbage dump, sneaks onto the launching pad and into the capsule, hitching a free ride into outer space. There is the the fat one (David Gore), the smart one (Philip Daniel Bolden)

The NASA board investigating the worst space disaster in history released photographs and a videotape yesterday that showed an emission of hot gases on the right solid-fuel booster of the shuttle Challenger about 15 seconds before an explosion that destroyed the spacecraft. The "unusual plume" was detected in film taken by cameras mounted in Playalinda Beach, just north of the Challenger launch pad, said Hugh Harris, chief spokesman for the Kennedy Space Center. Harris said that the film - taken by 70mm cameras and transferred to videotape - showed a different angle from the official film released earlier and the film shown on network television.

General Electric Co. yesterday took another leap in space technology by announcing a $50 million contract to build a satellite that eventually could pinpoint the location of ships, cars and trucks - even pedestrians - from 22,300 miles above the earth. The satellite will be GE's third built for Geostar Corp., a Washington pioneer in tracking satellites. Although the U.S. military already has a sophisticated space-tracking network, the company is among the first to design a system for locating and monitoring commercial ships, trucks, cars and aircraft and people with signals bounced off satellites.

By continuing to launch space shuttles despite clear warnings that the design of a key booster rocket joint had dangerous flaws, NASA was "walking right on the edge of a cliff and several of these factors just pushed us over," a top space agency investigator said yesterday. "That joint had several shortcomings and it's quite marginal. . . . It's not the world's highest tech joint design. It's very unforgiving," said James R. Thompson, a former Princeton professor who directs a National Aeronautics and Space Administration task force examining the Jan. 28 explosion of the shuttle Challenger that killed its crew of seven.

IN RIO IT PAYS TO STAY IN YOUR HOTEL ROOM Talk about a tough town on tourists. Carmelo Santos Jr. of Miami visited Rio de Janeiro on a "fun trip" sponsored by Varig airlines to help travel agents get to know Brazil. First Santos got to know the Ipanema nightclubs. Then Monday night, he got to know the inside of a military police van. While dining in a restaurant two blocks from his four-star hotel in Copacabana, he was snared in a federal police roundup of foreign tourists.

If 3-D is to become the wave of the future in Hollywood, it will not be because of "Fly Me To The Moon. " The technology may be updated, but the story of flies hitching a ride to the moon on the Apollo 11 mission needs a booster rocket, or something. In "Fly Me," a trio of boy flies, bored with their life at a Florida garbage dump, sneaks onto the launching pad and into the capsule, hitching a free ride into outer space. There is the the fat one (David Gore), the smart one (Philip Daniel Bolden)

NASA aborted an attempt to set a new speed record for an aircraft yesterday, blowing up a rocket that was to help launch the unmanned X-43A jet. The jet had been scheduled to make its maiden flight over the Pacific Ocean. A B-52 carried it and a Pegasus rocket over the ocean, where the rocket would have ignited and boosted the experimental plane to about 100,000 feet before releasing it. But the booster rocket was ordered destroyed seconds after being released from the belly of the B-52.

"In a moment, the exciting conclusion of Showdown of the Celebrity Cannibals, but first this message . . . " "Howdy, friends! Friends, do you love comfort? Do you love security? Do you love Al Gore? "Well, welcome to Bill Clinton's Kut-rate Missile Defense Systems. I'm Bill Clinton, and I'm here to tell you about our new, U.S.-government-certified interceptor missile. "She's a beauty, folks - comes complete with X-band radar tracking system, booster rocket and lots of defense contracts for Lockheed, Raytheon, Boeing and the rest.

Joe Baca says he can't fathom why some people are giving him so much grief. Yes, it's true that he has taken $56,000 in campaign money from the gun lobby during his political career, and, yes, he is routinely tagged as the National Rifle Association's poster boy. But all the critics are acting as if he's in love with violence, as if he wants to see more kids get shot up. Here he is, a Democratic state senator striving to indulge his long-deferred...

The meeting was at a restaurant along the New Jersey Turnpike in the spring of 1995, at a midpoint between the homes of agent Keith Glass, of Red Bank, and the Maloneys, of Haddonfield. Jim Maloney, the respected assistant basketball coach at Temple, was in the market for someone to represent his son, Matt, the 1994-95 Ivy League Player of the Year at Penn. Matt Maloney, a 6-3 guard with excellent three-point shooting range, court sense and defensive instincts, was not about to be selected in the NBA draft.

When she looks out her window, tarot card reader "Mrs. K. " can see little more than the scaffolded outline of the Reading Terminal. Let her consult her cards, though, and she suddenly gets more expansive. "I know in due time, this place will pay," she says of the giant limestone-and-brick-faced Convention Center that has arisen down 12th Street. "They'll make it, believe me, they'll make it. " Mrs. K. isn't the only person on 12th Street who's had that vision recently. When Vice President Gore cuts the ribbon on the new Convention Center on Saturday, a milestone will have been reached that perhaps only native Philadelphians can fully appreciate.

IN RIO IT PAYS TO STAY IN YOUR HOTEL ROOM Talk about a tough town on tourists. Carmelo Santos Jr. of Miami visited Rio de Janeiro on a "fun trip" sponsored by Varig airlines to help travel agents get to know Brazil. First Santos got to know the Ipanema nightclubs. Then Monday night, he got to know the inside of a military police van. While dining in a restaurant two blocks from his four-star hotel in Copacabana, he was snared in a federal police roundup of foreign tourists.

The Soviet Union will make a second attempt at launching its space shuttle on its unmanned maiden flight within the next few days, Moscow Radio said yesterday. The first try on Oct. 29 was postponed just 51 seconds before takeoff when a platform failed to swing clear. "The launch and test flight, with sytems on automatic, will take place in the coming days," Moscow Radio said, without specifying a date for blastoff. Scientists said soon after the countdown was stopped that they saw the problem as minor.

General Electric Co. yesterday took another leap in space technology by announcing a $50 million contract to build a satellite that eventually could pinpoint the location of ships, cars and trucks - even pedestrians - from 22,300 miles above the earth. The satellite will be GE's third built for Geostar Corp., a Washington pioneer in tracking satellites. Although the U.S. military already has a sophisticated space-tracking network, the company is among the first to design a system for locating and monitoring commercial ships, trucks, cars and aircraft and people with signals bounced off satellites.

By selecting the best of the current inventory of booster-rocket parts, the space shuttle could fly in a couple of months using a volunteer crew of military personnel for a military mission. Flying the shuttle in warm weather probably poses no greater risk than taking off or landing a fighter plane on an aircraft carrier, which is done every day. Military satellites are already behind schedule. One of the satellites is too large to be launched by the Titan rocket. It can only be launched by the shuttle and is urgently needed to monitor Soviet activity.