Word: houstons
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...space shuttle Columbia touched down on a California runway yesterday morning, the men who run things at Mission Control in Houston took off their headphones and applauded the successful conclusion of one more voyage into space But, for at least one of these men, the cheering signaled far more than just relief. With the end of the Columbia's fifth space flight, astronaut Jeffrey A Hoffman moved one step closer to his long-awaited first day in space...
Hoffman and his colleagues differ from their predecessors in another, perhaps even more important, way When the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in 1978 announced the selection of the astronaut group that included Hoffman, a reporter asked the director of the Manned Space Flight Center in Houston to comment on his new charges Christopher C. Kraft Jr. said the new astronauts--the first picked by NASA in more than eight years--were "extremely highly qualified and motivated, because, unlike previous applicants, many have wanted to become as turnouts since they were 10 or 12 years...
...opportunity to apply there was no way i could say no, Hoffman says. But the odds were not encouraging: out of 8079 applicants for pilot and mission specialist openings, NASA selected 20 mission specialists and 15 pilots. After first making the finalists group of 208, Hoffman was flown to Houston for a week of interviews and medical exams. Shortly thereafter, many of Hoffman's relatives, friends and colleagues started getting calls from the FBI, inquiring about all the personal details that NASA needed to know before putting someone in the back seat of their billion-dollar space plane...
Taking the inquires--which friends were quick to tell him about--as a sign that he was still in the running. Hoffman held his breath until the call finally came. With the phone call came the move to Houston...
...York 120, Houston...