Word: padding
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...closest associates in Government stood in a White House office room, their gaze fastened upon a television screen. Like millions of Americans in millions of other homes, they held their breath, crossed their fingers and prayed as they watched the Redstone rocket belch flame on its Cape Canaveral firing pad, lift off with maddening slowness, then streak magnificently southward...
...Residue. In his silvered pressure suit, Astronaut Shepard seemed a creature from another planet as he stepped out of a white van into the baleful Florida dawn last week. He glittered under the searchlights that surrounded the rocket pad as he made his long-legged walk to the gantry elevator that would lift him to his capsule. When he rose to the "greenhouse," an enclosed platform at the gantry's 65-ft. level, technicians helped him squeeze through a hatch in the squat, black space capsule perched atop a Redstone rocket. Then he submitted to the time-consuming business...
...Then, escorted by two doctors, he carried his portable air-conditioning unit out of the building. Glaring TV lights met him head on, forcing him to squint his eyes. He climbed into the white transport van, lay down on another contour couch while the van drove slowly to Pad...
...Disaster. For the first time in the tensest quarter-hour of his life, Alan Shepard could afford to forget the intricate complex of rescue gear that had been guarding his path from Pad 5 to U.S.S. Lake Champlain. Few men in history have been watched over so cautiously. Long before he blasted off, Astronaut Shepard had become the focus of a vast deployment of equipment and personnel. Everything imaginable had been done to ensure his safety...
Until the last two minutes before blastoff, the cherry picker had been close to the pad, prepared to snatch Shepard from Freedom 7 in case of a disaster on the ground. Besides the cherry picker, a fire-proofed Army personnel carrier stood by with a fire-suited crew. Some four miles from Pad 5, the headquarters of the Cape's Abort Rescue Team was a humming hive of activity. Six helicopters were tuning up, ready to carry skilled technicians, doctors and frogmen to rescue the astronaut if the capsule splashed near by. If the Freedom 7 should start...