Robert Crippen Quotes
I thought it was going to take a lot more countdowns on the pad. We actually did scrub once, but I figured we'd scrub several times since it's a pretty complicated vehicle.
Crippen, Robert L. Interview by Rebecca Wright. NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project, NASA, 26 May 2006.
The backward countdown of the rocket launch was first thought of by Lang and used in the film to be more exciting. Then the rocked scientists and engineers adapted it, and it has become stanard procesdure for launches of space vehicles and sattelite.
Medaris then told him to do it in 90 days to give him some slack. 80 days later the U. S. put its first satellite in orbit with a Jupiter Rocket. There were scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory who had been experimenting with rocket recovery, who realized that they had enough power and technique to escape the Earth’s gravity and put an object in orbit. The asked for permission to do so on their next weekly firing and were refused. Two months later, the Russians put Sputnick in orbit.
Robert Laurel Crippen is an American retired naval officer and aviator, test pilot, aerospace engineer, and retired astronaut. He traveled into space four times: as Pilot of STS-1 in April 1981, the first Space Shuttle mission; and as Commander of STS-7 in June 1983, STS-41-C in April 1984, and STS-41-G in October 1984. He was also a part of the Manned Orbiting Laboratory, Skylab Medical Experiment Altitude Test, Apollo–Soyuz, and the Approach and Landing Tests for the Space Shuttle. He did not go to space for any of those programs.
