7/17/2003:

Intermediate Word:  valorize  (a) governmental price-setting  (b) to decorate for bravery  (c) to exhort on the eve of battle   (d) 
Difficult Word: - adscititous - (a) tending toward  (b) a cut above  (c) essential  (d) unessential

Searching For The Real Waterworld - SpaceDaily  Left:  Artist's impression of the surface of a waterworld.  According to Leger and his colleagues, these waterworlds would contain about six times the mass of Earth, in a sphere twice as wide as our planet. They would possess atmospheres and orbit their parent star at roughly the same distance that the Earth is from the Sun. Most excitingly, an ocean of water entirely covers each world and extends over 25 times deeper than the average depth of the oceans on Earth. According to calculations, the internal structure of a waterworld would consist of a metallic core with a radius of about 4000 kilometres. Then there would be a rocky mantle region extending to a height of 3500 kilometres above the core's surface, covered by a second mantle made of ice up to 5000 kilometres thick. Finally, an ocean blankets the entire world to a depth of 100 kilometres, with an atmosphere on top of this.

Concerned Citizens Ask for Congressional Action on Near Earth Objects - Space.com   A distinguished group of Americans joined together to send a unique request to Congressional leaders Wednesday -- a request that preparations be made to deal with the prospect of Earth being slammed by an asteroid or comet. The letter has been sent to President Bush and his cabinet, the Secretary General of the United Nations and to leaders around the globe.

The End Of US Manned Spaceflight Looms - SpaceDaily  Left:  The US manned space program has at best only a few more years of missions left in it, until its cost, complexity and design flaws results in another failure that grounds all US manned launches until a new transport system is designed and built.  Once again, NASA has proposed to develop a replacement for the troubled Space Shuttle. This year's project goes by the moniker "Orbital Space Plane". An interim version of OSP called the CRV (Crew Rescue Vehicle) to be developed by 2010 will take over the International Space Station lifeboat task now done by Soyuz. Sound familiar? It should. The OSP is only the latest of many "Shuttle replacement" programs that have all failed dismally. A close look at OSP shows that this program is also doomed to failure due to fundamental technical defects. It's no surprise that such usually reliable NASA boosters as "Space Coast" Congressman Dave Weldon and aerospace lobbyist Lori Garver have publicly attacked OSP.