Word: houstons
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Gear down," reported a chase jet, buzzing alongside and counting off the altitude: "50 feet . . . 40 . . . 5-4-3-2-1-Touchdown!" As its rear wheels made contact, the flight director in far-off Houston told his tense crew: "Prepare for exhilaration." Nine seconds later, the nose wheels were down too. Columbia settled softly onto the lake bed. Young had floated the shuttle along 3,000 ft. beyond the planned landing spot, able to use its surprising lift to make a notably smooth touchdown. As it rolled to a stop through the shimmering desert air, The Star-Spangled Banner rattled...
...always, there was in-flight banter between the astronauts and the Houston control center. When Crippen felt Houston was loading him with too many tasks at one time-realigning the inertial navigational unit, shooting a picture of the Southern Lights, confirming a message on the teletype-he asked in mock seriousness: "You mean all that right now?" To jog the astronauts awake, Houston piped in a loud country and western ditty about the shuttle called The Mean Machine. There was a somewhat more serious moment when Vice President Bush got on the radio from Washington to congratulate them on behalf...
...Mach 7, seven times the speed of sound, or about 5,100 m.p.h., Crippen crowed: "What a way to come to California!" Young lost his cool only after he had artfully landed Columbia right on the runway's center line. Eager to make an exit, he urged Houston to get the reception crews to speed up their "sniffing" chores-ridding the ship of noxious gases with exhausts and fans. When he was finally allowed to emerge, 63 min. after touchdown, he bounded down the stairs, checked out the tiles and landing gear, then jubilantly jabbed the air with...
...rarely announces a space launch beforehand, civilian NASA has carried out its shots in the full glare of publicity. But under the terms of NASA'S new partnership with the military, security is being tightened at such key facilities as Cape Canaveral and the Johnson Space Center in Houston in anticipation of military launches. Military observers are now regular participants at shuttle planning sessions and have their own facilities inside Mission Control. At the height of the shuttle's development problems, there was even talk that the task of getting the spacecraft off the ground should be turned...
...Columbia's triumph, no one at the Pentagon-or the Kremlin-is minimizing the shuttle's military importance. Even Columbia's commander, John Young, a former Navy test pilot, could not resist plugging the space shuttle's military possibilities. Said he, at a homecoming in Houston last week: "I think the American public is going to get their money's worth out of this baby. It will allow us to do in the '80s and '90s things we must do for defense...