Word: countdowns
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...initial Skylab team had to cope with the loss of part of the ship's shielding and with a major failure in its electrical system.* By contrast, the second team should find the lab in good working order. As the countdown began last week, the only potentially serious problem reported by mission controllers was a malfunction in an attitude-control gyroscope, the second to break down so far (seven of Skylab's complement of nine gyros in the triply-redundant system are still working). The astronauts will carry up a replacement gyro. Already on board is a twin...
...final decision on suits brought by Australia and New Zealand charging that the French program violated their rights. But the French government appeared unmoved by the court's action. It had previously ignored the suits, claiming that the court had no jurisdiction over "matters of internal security." The countdown on the tests continued...
Shortly before Apollo 17 was to have been launched, many spectators were startled by a burst of flame that seemed to come prematurely from the base of the rocket. The countdown clocks suddenly stopped only 30 seconds before the scheduled liftoff. To the disappointment of the throng at the cape and the millions more watching over television, Launch Control announced curtly: "We have had a cut-off." Never before during the Apollo program had a countdown been halted so close to blast-off time...
...been an explosion in the first stage of the rocket. Actually, NASA explained later, the early burst of flame had been a burn-off of excess fuel: the pumps had continued to run briefly after the shutdown. The real problem, it turned out, was a defect in the Terminal Countdown Sequencer, which supervises the complex operations in the last minutes before a launch...
...miniaturized circuitry did not touch, the signal was not given. That failure was noticed by an alert launch controller, who immediately threw a manual switch that started the necessary procedure. The computer, programmed only to check its own automatic signals, assumed that pressurization had not begun and stopped the countdown...