Word: countdowns
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...balding man in crepe-soled shoes and a dark blue suit strolled quietly into the blockhouse opposite Pad No. 5 at Cape Canaveral, where Juno II stood tall and white with the gold-plated cone-Pioneer IV-hidden in its nose. Carrying his 72-page countdown book, he ambled around the blockhouse. The countdown had begun at 12:06 p.m. and was going well. He looked up at the rocket. "Very dignified," he observed approvingly. Later, as is his custom, he patted it affectionately before taking his position behind the three sheets of thick tempered glass that protect blast...
Steady Platform. In the blockhouse, Debus listened as the clipped argot of the missilemen's countdown came over the loudspeaker: "Telemetry-on. Radar beacon-on. DOVAP*-on." Hundreds of men both in and out of the blockhouse were doing thousands of things. The rocket itself had come awake. In its guidance section, a gyroscopically stabilized platform was accurately aligned with the intended course. When the rocket rose into the sky, the platform would keep steady in space, allowing the rocket's computer brain to steer by it as if it were both a compass and a horizon...
Looking up from a week of made-in-Moscow headlines, the U.S., across lunch counters, through stern editorials and in Washington debate, stirred with a sober realization that the nation faces a possibility of war over Berlin. "The countdown has begun," said Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson, as he called for national unity. Connecticut Democrat Thomas J. Dodd, touching off a notable Senate debate (see The Congress), warned that the U.S. may be facing "the supreme and ultimate test," and called for a 90-day "program of the utmost urgency." In Topeka, Kans. sometime G.O.P. Presidential Candidate Alf Landon warned...
...A.F.B., Calif., new training and operations center for military missile-launching teams (TIME, Dec. 15), Captain Bennie Castillo, 35, of the Strategic Air Command, fired the first Thor ever launched by a military crew. After prolonged preliminaries and one false start, Bennie Castillo turned the key that started the countdown. With cool efficiency, his five-man team rolled back a hangar-like shelter, elevated the bird, force-fed it with liquid oxygen, sent it soaring in 19 min. after the launch command was given (ultimate goal: 15 min.). The shot traveled the predetermined 1,450 miles over the Pacific...
...months were counted in bitter challenges met. Of the 13 short-range Atlas tests, five exploded during flight. In the first attempt on Sept. 18 to go full distance, the missile blew up 80 seconds after launching. But last week's countdown was delayed only 27 minutes for a minor technical difficulty. Running the test and pressing the big button was a man appropriately named for the job: Engineer Bob Shotwell, 47. With great restraint, Shotwell and his 40-man launch team quietly waited in their bunker a full seven minutes after the lift-off before they dared shout...