Word: liftings
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...Schaeffer of Belmont High School in Los Angeles, personal gestures caught the national mood. Schaeffer had been one of the teacher semifinalists in the competition to lift off on Challenger, and despite the disaster, he still yearns for a flight. "I would go today, right now. I wouldn't even go home to change," he said. But he appreciated the students who gently touched his shoulder on Tuesday. "It was an affirmation of life." For students, he explained, "a teacher in space becomes their teacher. Do you know an astronaut? Everyone knows a teacher...
...Sunday morning, McAuliffe, who had earlier reassured her parents by telephone that she was "rarin' to go," was set once again. Her parents, along with 18 third-graders from Concord, had flown to the cape to watch the lift-off. Christa's son Scott, 9, was in the class. Her daughter Caroline, 6, was also there but had never quite understood what her mother was doing. While McAuliffe had been in training, Caroline had asked several times by phone, "Mom, are you in space...
...preparation for Challenger's tenth journey into space had been painstakingly careful, and for its crew, agonizingly slow. It was an aptly all-American group: two women, a black, a Hawaiian of Japanese descent and three white men. The mission had originally been scheduled to lift off Jan. 20 from NASA's Pad 39-B, which had been refurbished after standing idle since an American crew aboard Apollo 18 left it to dock with a Soviet spacecraft ten years ago. The date slipped to Saturday, Jan. 25, after one of the other three space shuttles, Columbia, ran into delays with...
McAuliffe and her six fellow crewmates were indeed ready, but the 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...
...gusts up to 35 m.p.h. began sweeping across the Kennedy Space Center. Any malfunction immediately after lift-off would call for an "RTLS," return to launch site. Either Scobee or Smith could fire bolts that would release the orbiter from its external fuel tank and two booster rockets. Challenger could then loop swiftly back to Kennedy's landing strip. Nonetheless, the crosswinds were too strong for a sure landing. No such emergency had ever been encountered, but once again NASA took the prudent course: yet another delay...