"close enough for government work" 1965

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Sun, Apr 27, 2008 at 6:01 PM, Bonnie Taylor-Blake
<taylor-blake at nc.rr.com> wrote:
>
>  Ben Zimmer pointed out:
>
>  > Google Book Search has a NASA publication, _Results of the Second U.S.
>  > Manned Orbital Space Flight, May 24, 1962_ (in snippet view, of
>  > course). On p. 102, in what appears to be a flight transcipt, is the
>  > line, "That's probably close enough for government work."
>  >
>  > http://books.google.com/books?id=hBoCAAAAIAAJ
>
>  "Good enough for government work" is in _Results of the First U.S. Manned
>  Orbital Space Flight, February 20, 1962_, so it looks like the nine yards of
>  "____ for government work" was floating around NASA in the early 1960s.
>
>  http://preview.tinyurl.com/5jxzv7

Both lines are marked in the transcripts as "CC" or "Capsule
Communicator", so it could very well have been the same fellow at
Mission Control on both occasions.

--Ben Zimmer

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