45 years ago...

A sombre remembrance. Now, who can name the three Apollo 1 astronauts without looking it up?
 
write-stuff said:
A sombre remembrance. Now, who can name the three Apollo 1 astronauts without looking it up?
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Grissom
White
Chaffee

My uncle was working on the Apollo program when it happened. I'll always remember...
 
?Roger? Chaffee - pilot.
Ed White - pilot.
Gus Grissom - commander.

That was the Glory Days. They never lost sight of the goal. Today, not so much.
And they used the undamaged stages hardware on other flights in the program.

A little superstition here however this is a really bad 2 week time period for NASA. Something undefined in the Universe doesn't want them flying right now.
Apollo 1: end of january
Challenger: end of january
Columbia: beginning of february
They should take 2 weeks off this time of year in honor of the dead and to, um, not do that again.
 
Ok, which of the three was noted as the first American to perform an EVA (spacewalk)?

If you have to look it up, don't answer.
 
roncachamp said:
Ed White. I'd wager quite a few users of this forum could easily answer these questions.
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I grew up with Apollo. I used to know all the names and stories of those guys. I can still look at old photos and remember most of them.
 
roncachamp said:
Ed White. I'd wager quite a few users of this forum could easily answer these questions.
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Possibly so. But the general population couldn't name any astronaut other than maybe John Glenn, Neil Armstrong, and possibly Buzz Aldrin.

Ex-brother-in-law asked me back in the 90s what the Space Shuttle did. "Does it just go back and forth to the moon?" he asked.

Who was the first human to perform an EVA?
 
write-stuff said:
Possibly so. But the general population couldn't name any astronaut other than maybe John Glenn, Neil Armstrong, and possibly Buzz Aldrin.

Ex-brother-in-law asked me back in the 90s what the Space Shuttle did. "Does it just go back and forth to the moon?" he asked.

Who was the first human to perform an EVA?
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Alexi Leonov
 
write-stuff said:
A sombre remembrance. Now, who can name the three Apollo 1 astronauts without looking it up?
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Not me. I remember Volkov, Dobrovolsky and Patsayev though.

P.S. We have the same accidents in aviation all the time. Just last year a Gulfstream on a test flight crashed and burned up in Rosewell with 4 dead.
 
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write-stuff said:
Possibly so. But the general population couldn't name any astronaut other than maybe John Glenn, Neil Armstrong, and possibly Buzz Aldrin.

Ex-brother-in-law asked me back in the 90s what the Space Shuttle did. "Does it just go back and forth to the moon?" he asked.

Who was the first human to perform an EVA?
Click to expand...

I sometimes wonder if we, the US, is getting into the Dark Ages in some ways. We have forgotten that we knew how to land on the moon, walk around, and come back.
 
zaitcev said:
Not me. I remember Volkov, Dobrovolsky and Patsayev though.
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Soyuz-11.gif
 
Few know their names, but the astronauts I respect the most are:
1 - John Young
2 - Storey Musgrave

Both epitomize quiet professionalism. Young was in the middle of everything, from Gemini to the Shuttle, and never sought attention for himself.
 
PilotAlan said:
Few know their names, but the astronauts I respect the most are:
1 - John Young
2 - Storey Musgrave

Both epitomize quiet professionalism. Young was in the middle of everything, from Gemini to the Shuttle, and never sought attention for himself.
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Musgrave here also. That guy just got stuff done. I was reading how difficult it was for him to even climb into a spacesuit and was amazed. His work on preparing for the Hubble rescue missions is one of the best stories of "be prepared for anything" I've read.
 
Matthew said:
I sometimes wonder if we, the US, is getting into the Dark Ages in some ways. We have forgotten that we knew how to land on the moon, walk around, and come back.
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You're probably right. Holding patterns called racetracks. Computer directories called folders. Garbage man is a professional sanitation engineer...as in implies that college level engineering design degree is essential to pick a garbage can up and dump it out. Parts cannon technicians replacing skilled mechanics. It's not any one specific detail, it's just an overall cultural trend toward the beginning of the Dark Ages.

I think I still have the history book from college at my parents house. I remember looking through it for spaceflight. I mean it has to be something important in human history doesn't it? I found it. It was two short paragraphs. John Glen was the first man on the moon in IIRC 1966. Mercury orbited the moon in 1961. Something about 1969 and flower power and asian warfare. Armstrong did something I can't remember now but it was blatantly not right. That was it. The entire endeavor of the human species leaving their planet for another heavenly body noted in the history books for all to learn and know in about the same number of words as is in this paragraph.

I think if the president stood up this afternoon and said "land a man on the moon and return him safely to the earth before this decade is out" we wouldn't be able to do it. We forgot how. I don't think we could take the old Saturn/Apollo plans out and fly one of the things now because it's beyond our skill level. (Forget the overgrown experimental estes rockets, I'm talking using something that has proven it's ability to go there and back with people onboard)
 
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fgcason said:
I think if the president stood up this afternoon and said "land a man on the moon and return him safely to the earth before this decade is out" we wouldn't be able to do it. We forgot how. I don't think we could take the old Saturn/Apollo plans out and fly one of the things now because it's beyond our skill level.
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I don't think it's beyond our skill level. It's simply beyond our will.
There's not a constituency for it, and there's insufficient opportunity for graft and payoffs. We have become a fragmented society, where thousands of groups have their hands out and are only interested in what's in it for them.

We're less concerned about accomplishing anything, than about paying off the right people. The payoff is the goal, not the stated target accomplishment.
 
talk is cheap and it takes money to buy whiskey.

no bucks, no buck rogers.
 
Just a small thing. I was amazed at the color and clarity of the photo. It looks like the picture was taken yesterday. If enhanced, NASA did a good job of making it look correct.
 
PilotAlan said:
Few know their names, but the astronauts I respect the most are:
1 - John Young
2 - Storey Musgrave

Both epitomize quiet professionalism. Young was in the middle of everything, from Gemini to the Shuttle, and never sought attention for himself.
Click to expand...

Read Mike Mullane's book Riding Rockets. He paints Young in a much different light. As an astronaut he was awesome, and widely respected. As a manager, especially as the Chief of the Astronaut Office under George Abby, he wasn't quite as great.

I'll give him and Bob Crippen a lot of credit for riding STS-1, though!

I've always enjoyed Al Bean and Gene Cernan.
 
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