for astronauts john young and robert griffin this was finally the day.uld be the first to fly it to space. the new space transportation system sts called the shuttle had seen its share of development problems and delays. >> those tiles kept falling off, the engines kept blowing up. >> before it ever flew. >> and john and i thought it would be a good idea to fix those. >> young had flown twice on the gemini program and twice on apollo. walking and riding on the moon during apollo xvi. griffin was the rookie. >> it was only when we got inside of a minute that i looked at john and said i think we're really going to do it. that's when my heart rate went up. >> t minus 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4. we've gone from main engine start. >> the first stage, 8 1/2 minutes under thrust goes back so fast. on my first flight my eyes were like saucers. so that seemed like about 15 seconds. >> john, your heart rate hardly went up at all. but bob's went up to about 130 on ascent. >> i was excited. >> were you confident that you guys were going to get back okay? >> well, we had e

for astronauts john young and robert griffin this was finally the day.hey would be the first to fly it to space. the new space transportation system sts called the shuttle had seen its share of development problems and delays. >> those tiles kept falling off, the engines kept blowing up. >> before it ever flew. >> and john and i thought it would be a good idea to fix those. >> young had flown twice on the gemini program and twice on apollo. walking and riding on the moon during apollo xvi. griffin was the rookie. >> it was only when we got inside of a minute that i looked at john and said i think we're really going to do it. that's when my heart rate went up. >> t minus 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4. we've gone from main engine start. >> the first stage, 8 1/2 minutes under thrust goes back so fast. on my first flight my eyes were like saucers. so that seemed like about 15 seconds. >> john, your heart rate hardly went up at all. but bob's went up to about 130 on ascent. >> i was excited. >> were you confident that you guys were going to get back okay? >> well, we