Gravity Probe B

and engineers set themselves one of the most daunting technical challenges of their day? For the ultimate importance of a project like Gravity Probe B may not be found in the telemetry beamed from orbit or from the formulas that measure the warp of space and time. Rather, it arises from the sheer difficulty of the scientific challenge the experiment posed and the manner in which it stirred the technical imaginations of the generation of men and women who labored to overcome it. ST

Robert Lee Hotz is an award-winning science writer for the Los Angeles Times.

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