Full sea trials of the new lifeboat will be held later this year and the first operational craft will be ready in 2013.

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It will take about three months for Nasa engineers to test the platform and get it ready for use at its operational altitude of 705km.

BBC: Lift-off for latest Landsat mission

But ATK and Astrium believe their experience means they could have the 90m-high (300ft) Liberty rocket ready to fly by 2013, and operational with astronauts on board by 2015.

BBC: New rocket could lift astronauts

The first operational Typhoon squadron will be on high alert in June, ready to protect Britain's skies from foreign intruders and intercept hijacked aircraft.

ECONOMIST: Defence procurement

So I think it is important for people to know that we've been ready to do this for some period of time and it was just an operational thing within the sheriff's department because of the tremendous manpower, person-power that they had to put out for the Halloween thing.

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