T-Minus 60 Seconds
“Pressure systems now armed, lift off order will be released at T-Minus 16 seconds.”
The voice traffic became chaotic. Hundreds of voices give their consent that their particular areas of responsibility are ship-shape. The word nominal sounds to laymen watching the world over as a classic understatement. If things are great, then say ‘Fuel is Great!’ NASA prefers the word Nominal to indicate that sys-tems are performing as the design engineers predicted in their simulation models.