Word: nasa
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...NASA, meanwhile, had its own difficulties. Last week the space shuttle Columbia was still resting in its hangar at Florida's Kennedy Space Center following the postponement of its launch scheduled for Oct. 28. Officials suspected there were flaws in the thermal insulation on the nozzle of one of Columbia's two strap-on solid-propellant booster rockets. Similar coating on a rocket nozzle recovered from the previous shuttle flight in August turned out, on postflight inspection, to be just a hairline away from burning through. Some space officials said that if the rocket had fired only...
...delay was especially embarrassing to NASA because Columbia was to have carried into orbit the $1.1 billion European-built Spacelab. A self-contained scientific station, it will perform a wide variety of experiments while parked in the shuttle's open cargo bay. At Kennedy last week crews stripped away the questionable booster while tests continued on why the insulating material failed. NASA said that there would be no firm word on a new launch date before Nov. 1. Lift-off could take place as soon as Nov. 28, but if that "window" is missed, the next opportunity would...
...RIGHT STUFF begins in 1947 at Edwards Air Force Base, where we first meet some of the men who a decade later will become astronauts: Cooper (Dennis Quaid), Grissom (Fred Ward) and Deke Slayton (Scott Paulin). Along the way NASA adds Glenn (Ed Harris). Alan Sheperd (Scott Glenn). Scott Carpenter (Charles Frank) and Wally Schirra (Larrie Henriksen). But Yeager remains on the California desert to continue his test runs which seem every bit as heroic as his counterparts' trips into space. As portrayed by the playwright Sam Shepard, Yeager stands above the rest. His humility, perseverance and courage imply that...
...test pilots that NASA gets for its guinea pigs are not true leads in the field. When recruiters go to Edwards Air Force Base to lure the flyers into becoming astronauts types who can't even get the respect of the waitress at Pancho's Happy Bottom Riding Club. When they approach the ringleader, Chuck Yeager, he laughs and calls it work for a lab animal...
...contrast is sharpest in the closing scenes of the movie, when six of the seven astronauts have made it into space. While the NASA crew is being wined and dined at an elaborate Texas barbecue, Yeager rides to Edwards Air Force Base and steps into a new jet fighter. The Soviets, he says, have set a new speed record, and he is determined to break it. As the astronauts comfortably watch a Sally Road feather dance from their banquet hall seats. Yeager goes too for too fast and loses control. But in an act more heroic than any earth orbit...