Word: liftoff
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...moment. With accommodations in short supply, the self-described "odd couple" rented a 29-ft. recreational vehicle that they parked just 100 yards from NASA's press center. Cate, who has covered ten Gemini and two Apollo space missions, was not surprised by the postponement of the shuttle liftoff. Says he: "NASA has hardly ever had an on-time launch of a new spacecraft. A glitch was sure to creep into the countdown...
...apparent inability of scientists to explain anything in laymen's terms. Even the letter F can be a mystery. At NASA it stands for Fahrenheit, failure, female, forward and front." Washington Correspondent Jerry Hannifin was at the Kennedy Space Center to witness the shuttle's pyrotechnic liftoff a week ago Sunday. Hannifin, who covered the Gemini space program during the 1960s, was reminded once again of the high drama that always attends rocket launchings. Says he: "We are heading into space with all the capabilities to make it a living and working environment...
...waiting, watching world. Two days late but this time almost precisely on its new schedule-indeed, only 3.983 sec. late, by Launch Control's incredibly accurate reckoning-the spaceship Columbia took off on man's first commuter run into the heavens. Two minutes after the flawless liftoff, the two solid-fuel boosters folded back from the 75-ton space shuttle and began to settle under parachutes about 160 miles downrange in the Atlantic Ocean, only 16 miles off target, for recovery by ship and later reuse. Said Mission Control: "Columbia is now committed to space travel...
...first time in six years that Americans had been in space, and it came 20 years to the day after Soviet Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin made the first manned space flight. But for Columbia's commander, John Young, 50, it was old hat. During the 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...
...Horst Wessel Song sung by ex-rocket scientists of the Third Reich; Vice President Lyndon Johnson furiously cooling his heels outside the Glenn house because Annie Glenn would not let him in during her husband's countdown; Alan Shepard losing a struggle with his full bladder moments before liftoff; the overeager press terrifying Ham the chimp after his proficient flight; the astronauts surrounded by thousands of cheering Texans waving hunks of rare meat during an honorary barbecue in the Houston Coliseum...