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5,4 ...

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We've gone for main engine start.

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We have main engine start.

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On April 12, 1981, the Space Shuttle\h
launched for its first mission, STS-1.

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There was a lot of excitement surrounding\h
that launch. It would be the first time\h\h

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that Americans had launched from American soil\h
since the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project in 1975.

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♫♫♫

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Well, the first flight, our intent is\h
primarily to make sure that the bird\h\h

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will get up like we want it to and\h
it'll come down like we wanted to.

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The Space Shuttle would be a significant\h
achievement. It would be the first of its\h\h

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kind - a fully reusable vehicle\h
for travel to low-Earth orbit.

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The design and development of\h
the Space Shuttle took 10 years.

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The propulsion systems, the\h
space shuttle main engines were\h\h

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some of the most complex, highly advanced engines.

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[engine noise]

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They still exist today because the\h
RS25s on the Space Launch System.

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But for those people who don't understand the\h
significance of this, one more time please,\h\h

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why do you think this is so important?\h
Why are you so satisfied with it?

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Well it's a, it's a, it's an age\h
long goal to be able to fly into\h\h

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and out of space but even more\h
than that, uh, I think it's a\h\h

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remarkable way to get payloads up\h
into space cheaply and economically.

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It's what we've been trying to do for the\h
last 10 years, routine access to space.\h\h

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It's going to improve science and technology\h
in this country. That's going to be remarkably\h\h

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beneficial to everyone in this room in\h
ways that we just can't even imagine.

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Robert and I have spent the\h
most exciting and interesting\h\h

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two and a half days probably that we ever\h
spent in our lives or ever spent again.

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The spaceship Columbia is a phenomenal, it\h
is a incredibly amazing piece of machinery\h\h

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and anytime you can take something that\h
big and put it into space and bring it back\h\h

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land it on a runway you have just accomplished\h
something just short of a miracle I believe.

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[laughter]

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I believe that as we stand here this afternoon,\h
even those of us with the greatest imagination\h\h

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cannot in any way project\h\h

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the future that has been opened by the flight\h
that John and Crip have just completed.

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[applause]

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The success of the STS-1 mission was the\h
beginning of a long line of successes.

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Overall, the Space Shuttle program\h\h

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would verify that human beings could\h
travel routinely to the low-Earth orbit.

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While there were incredible risks involved and\h
incredible things that happened along the way,\h\h

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NASA never failed to come back to its mission\h
and over the course of those three decades,\h\h

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the Space Shuttle program led\h
a number of successful missions\h\h

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and really redefined what we know\h
about the microgravity environment.

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It enabled the building of\h
one of the most successful\h\h

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facilities human beings have ever designed-\h\h

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the International Space Station and provided\h
access to that space station for a long time.

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It would go on to deliver a number of incredible\h
observatories to low-Earth orbit- Hubble, Chandra,\h\h

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Compton Gamma Ray Observatory\h
and a number of other missions.

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It was a remarkable success\h
that has led us to this moment.

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We can learn a lot from the Space Shuttle.

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We can even improve upon the Space Shuttle.