Word: pads
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...orbit 170 miles above the earth. So it should go this week, shortly after the sun rises over Cape Canaveral on Friday. If there are no new hitches Astronauts John Young, 50, and Robert Crippen, 43, will board their 75-ton orbiter Columbia, lift off from the same launch pad that sent Young and other Apollo astronauts to the moon, and spend 54½ hours racing around the earth before bringing down their magnificent flying machine-the most advanced spacecraft ever built-to a daredevil "dead-stick" landing in California's Mojave Desert. That...
CAPE CANAVERAL. Fla.-As the space shuttle Columbia poised on its launch pad yesterday, its commander, John W. Young, and pilot, Robert L. Crippen, relaxed by cruising in T-38 jets before a last sleep, and 4800 members of the press awarded like Caps mosquitos to the media site three-and-a-half mils down-range from Columbia...
...reopened the old studio shacks they had used during the glory days. ABC, which had closed its down, had to build a new one. But the ABC structure--complete with studio and panoramic plate-glass windows for viewing the launch--was installed backwards. It faced not pad 39A, from which the shuttle blasts off, but a swamp. So ABC had to call a crane to turn the entire two-story pine box around...
...sixth technician discovered the mishap and called a security guard, who donned a breathing apparatus that enabled him to drag the five from the compartment. An ambulance speeding to pad 39-A reportedly was delayed by security...
...test-firing countdown had to be pushed back three times last week. First technicians struggled to purge impurities from the fuel-cell pipes, then to replace a faulty electronic module, and finally to wheel a huge service tower away from the launch pad. Explained Launch Director George Page: "This is our very first countdown for the shuttle, and you expect these kinds of problems." Indeed, the shuttle program's problems have become a kind of national headache...