Word: nasa
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Some people loudly object to NASA and the shuttle, saying the money should be spent elsewhere. From the beginning of the manned space program in the late '50s until the end of Project Skylab in 1979, NASA spent approximately $60 billion. This sounds like a lot until one considers that today $60 billion would last four months in the Department of Health and Human Services...
...last charged Kennedy Space Center, and the space community in general, with a mood of revived expectancy and muted exultation. No hats in the air and no drinks all around as in the old days of A-O.K. lift-offs and jubilant splashdowns. Still, the spirit of the NASA people was lifted by a palpable shot of what Kleinknecht calls "the Apollo spirit, the stuff that made Apollo work." Says he: "I think we've got it going again...
...sobering fact is that the Columbia, unlike every other U.S. spacecraft, will be launched without having undergone unmanned test flights in space; to bring it back alive, the astronauts must go along on the very first trip. If only for that reason, the launch may be the riskiest NASA has ever undertaken. The odds? John Naugle, NASA'S former top scientist and now a consultant, calls the chance for complete success a "sporting proposition." But Kenneth Kleinknecht, the shuttle orbiter manager, insists that there will be no launch until every risk has been minimized. Says Kleinknecht...
...into a new era of space research and manufacturing," says President Karl Harr Jr. of the Aerospace Industries Association. As such, it could help the nation reclaim the leadership in manned spaceflight that it has never relinquished in unmanned explorations, such as those of Venus, Saturn and Jupiter. Says NASA Engineer Robert Gray, mindful of the Soviet advances in recent years: "The shuttle is revolutionary. We'll catch up fast...
Despite the difficulties, there was still time last week to imagine the lift-off that would for the first time use solid rockets to boost men into space. Said NASA Official James Kukowski: "It's going to be a visual spectacular, more spectacular than usual. When Columbia goes up, it won't be just flames and steam as it is for the Saturn stuff. There will be huge streamers of fire and dark, billowing clouds of smoke." And, quite likely, a good deal of hoping and praying. And not a little of that anticipatory mood that was expressed last week...