Word: countdowns
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...broken only by the whir of a generator, the purr of a hydraulic pump, the leaky-faucet sound of water trickling down the packing gland of the periscope barrel. The sub broke water, the bridge hatch swung open, the skipper and his lookouts scrambled topside. There they began the countdown required before launching a 1,000-mile Regulus-type missile. The sub rocked quietly, like a metronome. After precisely 15 minutes came the fire command. A light flashed skyward, headed northwest-in the direction of Washington...
...raincoated tourists scrambled to the crest of a high dirt dike near Cornwall. Ont. one morning last week and peered through the mist toward a stubby earthen dam 2½miles away. At 7:55 a warning rocket arched overhead, and a voice on a loudspeaker began a countdown. An engineer in a timbered bunker pressed a button; from the explosive-mined dam a yellow curtain of debris belched upward toward the thunderheads. Deliberately, the blasted dam crumbled, and muddy water poured through, first in a thick stream, then in a torrent...
...with a blast from the Rev. Charles Duell Kean of Washington's Episcopal Church of the Epiphany against the U.S. Navy for attaching a St. Christopher medal to its successful Vanguard satellite-bearing rocket. "Would it have served just as well." demanded Dr. Kean, "if along with the countdown routine, a man had been assigned at each stage in the process to cross his fingers and say 'Muggles'? Had anyone thought of attaching a four-leaf clover to the missile somewhere? The fact that a symbol or a word is associated with traditional Christianity does not prevent...
...rocket standing on Launch Pad 18A. In Vanguard's nose was a 3¼-lb. antenna-horned space satellite that symbolized at once the hope and despair of all the men at the Cape. Temperamental Vanguard, twice a spectacular failure, was once again ready for the shoot: the countdown was onT minus 16 minutes...
...Minus Ten." Gathered in the blockhouse, many of them wearing green shirts in honor of St. Patrick's Day, the countdown crewmen ticked off the checklist. At the intersection of Navaho Road and Vanguard Road, 1.800 ft. away, Walsh took his position in a faded blue Air Force communications van. With him was President Eisenhower's Naval Aide E. P. (Pete) Aurand and a handful of Vanguard men. Paul Walsh had a phone line hooked to the Washington office of his immediate superior, Dr. John P. Hagen, director of Project Vanguard. The same line was connected to telephones...