x. air force pilot. during competitions he is often charged with the task of ensuring the crew safe return to his job is retrieving crews of from wherever they might land. rainbow pickup is calling day rate because i can see. wonderful. special training to learn how to get his bearings in different conditions whether in the woods or mountains but tracking a balloon through the streets of a town is a skill in its own right. the problem with tracking a balloon flying over a city or another population center is that there is a mass of people. you need to have a good knowledge of the city's top. and the floods so. what invariably ends up happening. is you get stuck in traffic. which is just great. this is a very convenient place. from here we can see where balloons are going where they are likely to touch down. and you see our balloon rising over this town it's over by the hill. how far a balloon can fly depends on the wind what's most important is to make sure that it lands in such ways to make it easy for

limitations of time and distance were being brushed aside as experimental planes like the x-15 launched from its air forceed to record-breaking altitudes and speeds. unmanned experimental flights and orb built pressed onward until it was time for man to orbit. until the word was "go." chosen from many americans who answered the president's call, these astronauts dedicated themselves to study, training and physical conditioning. with alan shepard learning about weightlessness and gus grissom with the space gravity as wally schirra masters manual spacecraft control. three years of engineering skill and scientific experimentation have gone into this historic atlas launching. its component parts have come from countless sources, devitzed and fabricated by many thousands of technicians in hundreds of united states cities. and this, the motive power, carefully raised to position on its gantry. this, the atlas. with power to develop 360,000 pounds of thrust, with capability to swiftly lift the spacecraft and its passenger as high as 160 miles and inject into orbit at 17,500 miles an hour. and now the word is "go

limitations of time and distance were being brushed aside as experimental planes like the x-15 launched from the air forceothership rocketed to record-breaking altitudes. unmanned orbits pressed on until it was time for man to orbit. until the word was "go." chosen from many americans who answered the president's call, these astronauts dedicated themselves to study, training and physical conditioning. with alan shepard learning about weightlessness and gus grissom with the space gravity an and wally shirer. three years of engineering skill and scientific experiment have gone into this launching. it was devised by thousands of technicians in hundreds of united states cities. and this, the motive power, carefully raised to position on its gantry. this, the atlas. with the power to develop 360,000 pounds of thrust and the ability to lift the spacecraft and passengers into orbit at 17,500 miles per hour. now the word is "go" as the spacecraft is lifted into the position atop the atlas. this spacecraft, six feet across at its widest heat shield and ten feet tall, built to withstand temperatures of 3,000 degree

x. that's only improving. >> um, your boyfriend's a civilian? >> no, he's air force as well. >> has he met any of your colleagues already? >> we, he has. he was -- yes, he has. he was a writer for time magazine also for the last year. he was officer x for time magazine over the last year and, yeah, and that was definitely interesting, too, you know, coming out, essentially, together on september 20th and having, you know, being on the same base and having, you know, commanders be like, oh, here's these two people in the media doing this. and, but, i mean, it's all been positive, it's, you know, people that i work with want to, you know, want me to bring him and, you know, meet him. it's really, i've had no issue at all. at all. >> did you meet by being writers -- [laughter] >> gay in the military and writing under pen names? >> i mean, we started a club. [laughter] the club's kind of small, but -- [laughter] it's a cool club. i think my shadow looked a lot better in the median than his did. [laughter] >> how did you meet in the media? >> we met randomly just through

air-taxi operation. where it is that colgan would contract with... with x company to fly from a to b. >> o'brien: charter kind of thing. >> charter kind of thing. >> o'brien: chuck colgan is a former air forcepilot who built his charter company by first flying ibm executives between washington and the company's main plant in poughkeepsie. then, colgan got a big break when, in the late '70s, the government deregulated the airline industry. deregulation brought increased competition and lower airfares. it also brought a new operating model called the hub and spoke. the major airlines created central hubs in big cities and turned to small regionals, or commuters, to feed their networks. >> so, they created these mechanisms where, "okay, we'll buy," you know, "50-seat airplanes for you. you'll set up or expand an existing company, and we'll make it look like that it's actually our airline. you buy the ticket from us, but," you know, "you're really flying on this other carrier." >> o'brien: the new model of contract flying was called a code-share. the regional airline carried the same ticketing code and colors as the major. and under most contracts, the regionals were paid a set profit on each f

air force as well. >> has he met any of your colleagues already? >> yes, he has. he was, um, a writer for "time" magazine, also under a pseudonym for last year. of he was officer x for "time" magazine over the last year. yeah, that was definitely interesting, too, you know, coming out, essentially, together on september 20th and having, you know, being on the same base and having, you know, commanders be like, oh, here's these two people in the media doing this. but, i mean, it's all been positive. it's, you know, people that i work with want to, you know, want me to bring him and, you know, meet him. it's really, i've had no issue at all, at all. >> did you meet by being writers who were gay in the military? [laughter] writing under pen names? >> i mean, we started a club. [laughter] the club's kind of small, but -- [laughter] it's a cool club. i think my shadow looked a lot better in the media than his shadow did. [laughter] >> how did you meet himsome. >> we met randomly through friends. he just moved to the base, and a few mutual friends introduced us, and just like two weeks later after i started dating him, he started working with the sldn, and they're the