Word: craft
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...weather was not. A cold front was moving down the Florida peninsula, pushing showers ahead of it. While rain does not hamper takeoffs by airplanes, its impact on a space shuttle at the speeds it reaches shortly after lift-off could damage the heat-resistant tiles that protect the craft's thin skin. Challenger would not blast off even into a drizzle...
...launch platform was about to be flooded by powerful streams of water gushing from six pipes fully 7 ft. in diameter. The purpose: to damp the lift- off sound levels from Challenger's three engines. Otherwise, the acoustic energy alone could damage the craft's underside. The main-engine firing sequence was turned over to computers...
Scobee carried his fascination with flying to his home in suburban Houston, where he lived with his wife June and their two children. He and Astronaut James van Hoften built a two-seat, open-cockpit Starduster plane and flew it cross-country. The craft, made of wood and fabric, had no radio. Reflecting on this convergence of his work and leisure pursuits, Scobee once observed, "You know, it's a real crime to be paid for a job that I have so much fun doing." For all his accomplishments in the skies, however, Scobee was scrupulously modest. "He just wasn...
...have blown out Apollo's hatch by touching off explosive bolts. But Grissom was firmly opposed to the use of such bolts. Splashing down in the Atlantic in his Mercury capsule 5 1/ 2 years earlier, he had nearly drowned after its hatch bolts somehow blew prematurely, filling the craft with water...
...about 750 miles west of the Philippines. The deep natural harbor at Subic Bay, 50 miles northwest of Manila on the South China Sea, is the primary support and logistics base for the U.S. Seventh Fleet's 80 ships and 550 aircraft. Four floating dry docks can accommodate surface craft or submarines. Its supply depot is the Navy's largest, and its magazine holds 3.8 million cu. ft. of ammunition. Some 4,500 Filipino technicians keep 70 ships a month in good repair. The workers earn a typical salary of $1.80 an hour, one-seventh the amount in U.S. shipyards...