“Six, five, four, we’ve gone for main engine start and we have liftoff of America’s first Space Shuttle,” said NASA launch commentator Hugh Harris as more than a decade of development culminated with the dawn of a new era of spaceflight. John Young and Bob Crippen lifted off aboard Columbia on April 12, 1981. The Space Shuttle was an idea born in the closing days of the 1960s race to the Moon. The concept had many technological hurdles to overcome. After numerous delays, it became a triumph of American technology and engineering.