In The Shadow of The Moon (DSC)

silver-eagle

silver-eagle

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~John
Discovery is showing a Ron Howard documentary about the Lunar missions. I just checked the schedule (it is on now). There's a repeat at 1AM Tuesday morning. Actual NASA footage and interviews with the key players.
 
Everskyward said:
This is a great documentary. I attended a screening of it at the Bombardier Safety Standdown last fall.

http://www.intheshadowofthemoon.com/
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There is a subtle line in that movie form Al Bean about Neil Armstrong. He mentions that Neil was quiet.

A couple of years ago Al and I were driving to a speaking engagement that he had and he was telling me that Neil, who happened to have the office right next to his and they shared the same secretary, was downright silent.

When Neil crashed in the LLRV news of the accident quickly passed through the astronaut office. When Al got the news he was adamant it was not true as Neil was sitting at his desk working. So Al went back and asked Neil if he crashed and had the close call that everyone was talking about. Al then tells me that Neil looks up, say 'yep' and then goes right back to work and refused to say anything else. Al says he would have been talking to everyone about his 'close call' had it been him. Keep in mind at this time Al is starting to do training for his own mission on Apollo 12 as the LMP and also has to fly the LLRV in training.

I have been lucky to know a couple of the Apollo astronauts (a bunch of the shuttle era ones too) and two of the ones that have walked on the moon. These guys seem like regular guys. But every once and while you will get a hint of why they were so special.

Another Al Bean story that showed me how special he was. We were talking about one of his paintings. When he starts in a particualr problem he was facing on getting a part of one of the spacecraft painted properly. He then goes into this 15 minute description of how he travelled to JSC and the Smithsonian to see the space craft and worked for the next 8 weeks with photos to get it just right. To beocme that tenatious over a small part of the painting jsut showed me how dedicated and focused he can become. Let me tell you there was no way to stop him from going into the great detail of what he was doing. It was then that I realized just how special these guys really are.
 
gkainz said:
ding ding ding ding! That's where you know Gary Tucker from! Maybe? He's flying Ball's new (well, new a couple of years ago) Challenger.
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That's entirely possible. I remember meeting someone from Ball there but I am horrible with names and faces. :redface:

I'd like to put in a plug for Bombardier Safety Standdown. John (Fast n' Furious) encouraged me to go last year and I thought it was great. It's geared mostly to business aviation but if anyone somehow gets a chance to go they ought to seize the opportunity.
 
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