STS-1: 'A test pilot's dream'

Posted on: Apr. 12th, 2006 || Source: cnn.com | E-mail Article | Print Article

(CNN) -- Veteran commander John Young and his rookie pilot Robert Crippen faced a lot of uncertainties April 12, 1981, as they waited for the space shuttle Columbia to lift off from Florida's Kennedy Space Flight Center.

It was a test flight, after all, and the first time that NASA had launched a crew into space without first conducting an unmanned mission.

The now-familiar design -- an airplane-like orbiter standing on its tail mounted on an external fuel tank and two rocket boosters each filled with more than a million pounds of solid propellant -- was a dramatic departure from the towering, staged rockets used in previous manned missions.

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