Word: pad
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...October, when an Agena rendezvous rocket "backfired" and disintegrated in space, Schirra and Stafford were left sitting in Gemini 6 atop a Titan II on a Cape Kennedy launch pad. They were all dressed up with no place to go. Last week their first attempt to launch was frustrated when a monitoring-cable plug was accidentally jarred loose from the Titan II's tail, causing an automatic shutdown of its engines only two seconds before liftoff. Later investigation disclosed that the engines would have shut down anyway-on either of the first two launching attempts. Workmen had forgotten...
...details of this one was that it cost $100 million to build. In it, the rocket would be assembled stage, then moved by a "crawler" that can carry a 12-million pound load to a launching pad...
...long ride from the Kennedy Space Center--all NASA's--back to Cape Kennedy--a military complex with some land used by NASA. Bleachers were set up almost 2 miles from pad 19, where Gemini 7 was to take off (because the fuels used in the Titan rocket are poisonous, everyone, even the photographers, are kept at least 7000 feet from the pad...
...announcer at the launching pad introduced Sen. Howard Cannon (D-Nev.), Reps. George Miller (D-Cal.) and Don Brown (D-Cal), and Presidential assistant Jack Valenti, who had escorted a party of foreign diplomats, Shirley Maclaine was there incognito. Miss Florida Citrus strolled in front of the stands...
...tension didn't set in until it came down close to blast-off. At 30 seconds, the crowd suddenly shut up. The moment came, a cloud of smoke went up, and then a roar, a screaming, enormous roar that no TV microphone could ever reproduce. It left the pad, and seemed to hover above it for a few seconds. The crowd applauded. Then it was off, streaking across the sky into an open patch between the clouds, faster than you could believe, faster than the screaming jets that followed it, faster than the cameras can suggest. In less than...