Word: crippen
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They can hardly outdo Young, who has now made five space flights, including a moon landing, and his rookie pilot, Bob Crippen, 43. Though their lift-off was delayed two days because of that computer failure, once they settled into the cockpit for the second try, everything went, well, like a rocket. Barely 45 min. off the launch pad, Columbia was circling the earth at an altitude of 150 miles. Before the end of the day it reached 170 miles. Meanwhile, two vessels steamed out to recover the 80-ton shells of two spent solid-fuel rockets that had parachuted...
Into a clear blue hole in a partly overcast Florida sky the spacecraft rose, seemingly carried aloft by an ever lengthening orange-and-white column of fire and smoke. As it arched higher and higher, Astronaut Bob Crippen, 43, making his first flight into space, shouted exuberantly: "Man, what a feeling! What a view!" "Glad you're enjoying it," replied Mission Control in Houston...
...fiery, jolting liftoff, his pulse hardly climbed above 85 beats a minute; this was, after all, Young's fifth such journey, the most by any American astronaut. Allowed Young: "It shook a little sharper. The vibration was more than what we experienced in the simulator." But the rookie Crippen could barely contain his excitement-his pulse raced to 135-or find the right words to express his emotions. Looking out of Columbia's windows, he said jubilantly, "John's been telling me about it for three years, but ain't no way you can describe...
Even before they got their green light, the astronauts were settling in for a long haul. With almost anticlimactic ease, Crippen operated the spacecraft's big cargo bay, opening and closing and then reopening its doors. That was an essential maneuver at the start of the second orbit, allowing the ship to rid itself of internal heat from all its operations, and it was executed flawlessly. Televised pictures from space quickly showed just how well the machinery worked. Even the big engine housings in Columbia's tail were dramatically visible against the blackness of space...
...when it became clear that the computer timing problem could not be repaired quickly, the launch was canceled for the day, at an estimated cost of $6 million, and work crews rode up the service tower to help the astronauts out of the ship. Said a weary but unflappable Crippen: "It was just one of those things...