Word: blastoff
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...days before blastoff, preparations for the second launching of the space shuttle Columbia were "just going bang, bang, bang," according to Deke Slayton, manager of NASA's shuttle test program. Things were running so far ahead of schedule, in fact, that most workers at the Kennedy Space Center were given a morning off. Even the astronauts, Air Force Colonel Joe H. Engle, 49, and Navy Captain Richard...
...events turned out, the Sunday launch presented TIME'S staff with the most dramatic pictorial countdown the magazine has ever faced. Less than 24 hours after Columbia's blastoff, most copies of TIME featured an exclusive picture of the launch, the fastest color coverage in the magazine's history...
David Scott, Apollo 15 astronaut, on the blastoff: "You just sat there thinking that this piece of hardware had 400,000 components, all of them built by the lowest bidder...
...help protect their health during their extraterrestrial explorations, U.S. astronauts routinely go on special diets prior to launch. The Apollo 16 crew that landed on the moon last week has been on an even more highly specialized diet than usual. For three days before blastoff, the trio ate foods laced with potassium, and even the eggs in their farewell omelets came from hens raised on high-potassium feeds. Their in-flight food was similarly seasoned. The astronauts are not complaining; Ken Mattingly told Mission Control that the potassium even added a certain zest to his tomato soup...
EARLIER in the week, a liquid-hydrogen fuel tank had sprung a leak and threatened to delay the launch. Now, less than an hour before the late-morning blastoff, dark clouds rolled ominously across the last patches of blue in the Florida sky; a drizzling rain turned into a heavy downpour that virtually blotted pad 39A from view. But NASA officials, buoyed by a long string of space successes, were undaunted by the dangerous omens. The order was given to proceed. More reliable than any commuter train, the 11:22 moon rocket departed from Cape Kennedy. It was on schedule...