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

Published: Apr 12, 2006
Source: www.cnn.com



(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.continue..