By Stewart Taggart
Picture this: a magnum of Moët & Chandon balanced on a tray floating in an Olympic-sized pool. In the real-life scenario - Sea Launch - the bottle is a 200-foot rocket and the tray is a 436- by 220-foot platform adrift in the western Pacific. Boeing, the leader of this scheme, figures launching satellites into orbit from equatorial waters will save fuel and offer miles of crash space for spent rocket stages. The modified oil-drilling platform sails this month into Long Beach, California, where it will undergo final preparations for its October 30 maiden launch of a Galaxy XI satellite, the first of 18 scheduled blastoffs.
ELECTRIC WORD
Cruise Missile
