The computer adjusted thrust and vector to bring the ship to the 'fire' point and engage the countdown and sequence to launch, arm the warhead, and follow up.
The battle cruiser, aligned with its sisters in countdown on catapults in galleries and tunnels across Planet Pluto, was minutes from launch to Point Icarus.
All were in final countdown for launch from tunnels and galleries cut into reinforced chasms across a hundred kay of Pluto's surface.
At 0406 Turner announced “Land the Landing Force,” the familiar phrase which marked the sequential countdown to the first assault waves hitting the beaches at H-Hour.
It was like the countdown for a rocket firing, Rick thought.
By agreement, the countdown was to be broadcast to all aircraft over one of the airport frequencies.
By continuing the countdown until everything went into auto mode, Peretz was creating a monster of inevitability.
They had tried two preliminary power-ups previously, but the supercomputer had shut them down in the last hour of the countdown both times.
Minutes later Command sat as empty as a tomb, impotent and useless as the countdown continued to scroll, the Fujitsu working the will of Dore Peretz.
They've locked out all the other workstations and there's a countdown in process.
One thing was sure: the countdown was about to switch into auto mode--which meant the priming of the superconducting coil would begin.
He looked up at the large computer screen being projected on the wall at the end of the room, which showed a countdown in progress.
He paused to check the countdown scrolling on the terminal in front of him.
No technicians were in evidence, since the final stages of the countdown were underway and nothing remained to be done to the exterior of VX-1.
Dore Peretz knew exactly what the critical go/no-go points in the countdown were; he had researched the Cyclops system extensively.
The bomb was aboard one of the vehicles and a countdown was under way, now being handled by Bill's supercomputer.
The man who dreamed up thecountdown was a Brain," Bessie could hear Mike muttering over his open intercom, "but the man who thought up the hold was a pure genius.
The countdown is now T minus nineteen minutes twenty-eight seconds.
Maybe there's been a glitch in the countdown after all.
The thing to do was just appear to be proceeding with the countdown normally, keep everything innocent.
Everything had gone smoothly with the countdown so far this morning; he shuddered at the prospect of a last-minute hold.
In an unprecedented move, seconds after the countdown was halted, NASA cut its feeds to the networks and all 4 channels were left with the omnipresent long lens view of the space shuttle sitting idle on its launch pad.
While Richardson and Pitov were making their last-minute rounds, the countdown progressed past minus one hour, and at minus twenty minutes all the overhead lights went off and the small instrument operators' lights came on.
The countdown was just beyond two hours five minutes.
To the statesmen, this is a question of who is first and who is second, and perhaps who will control the spaceways," he said after describing the countdown in process.
The technician who took his place--you don't stop a countdown like that for a heart attack--checked his work and found an error that would have misfired the thing.
The next night, the big news was the countdown in process at Canaveral to put a functioning "dome" on the moon.
Or, as the countdown reaches zero, one hour from now, will the dome tear through the atmosphere of Earth in man's first real step to the stars successfully?
The above list will hopefully give you a few useful examples demonstrating the appropriate usage of "countdown" in a variety of sentences. We hope that you will now be able to make sentences using this word.
