His intonation was almost an en garde! It certainly was not polite and deferential, nibbling around the issue. It was more like punch and counterpunch. I liked it! “Oh, we’re going to use fingers,” I said, referring to the curved-leaf spring-like steel tines that would stretch out and keep contact with the surface as the comet material receded from the spike. To which he replied, “Well, are you just going to rely on the heat path along the spring length?” And so it went, punch and counterpunch, back and forth. These direct, assertive, full-on encounters made the other groups seem passive and
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