South Bend, April 12, 1981
Lift-off!
Shrouded in a white cloud of steam and with a flash of fire, the space shuttle Columbia lifted off from the launch pad on Cape Canaveral, rising into Florida’s blue morning sky. Already after two minutes, it vanished from sight like a comet on the horizon. Nearly two million people had assembled on Cape Canaveral to witness this historic moment in human spaceflight. The shuttle Columbia is the first reusable spacecraft that can fly several consecutive missions.
April 14, 1981
The astronauts John Young and Robert Crippen completed the test flight of the space shuttle Columbia with a picture book landing on the runway of Edwards Air Force Base in Southern California. Half an hour before the landing, the retro-rockets were fired over the Indian Ocean. Thereafter, the shuttle entered the atmosphere and glided down for the landing. The space shuttle Columbia can now be used for another mission.
The historic significance of this test flight for the further development of human travel in space is obvious. One can easily imagine that a regular shuttle service between the launching site on Cape Canaveral and a space station will be established. The planet Earth has shrunk to an extent that would have been unimaginable only a few years ago. By the ever growing network of telecommunication via satellite, every spot on Earth can instantly be transmitted in sound and image.
Addendum
[After landing on Edwards Air Force Base, the space shuttle Columbia was flown piggyback on a Boeing 747, especially equipped for that purpose, to Cape Canaveral. There, at the Kennedy Space Center, it was examined for damages and prepared for the next flight. NASA soon had a fleet of space shuttles at its disposition, which could be used alternately for various missions in space.]