DSKY-DSKY Him Sad: Official ILB Thread For The Heroic Age of Manned Spaceflight

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fuuuuuuuuuck

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51uYTHpYv4L._SX331_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

Anyone read this?

Not I, no.

nope

Today I went on a college tour with daughter #2 and at one point the guide said “two of our alumni worked for NASA as astronauts. They flew to the Moon and the International Space Station!” I don’t think it will come as a surprise to the readers of this thread that I asked him if he was sure about the first part of that last sentence and that I was a bit skeptical when he said “Yes!”

lol

“the moon” soundstage maybe

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOe5rB8o0To

shatner's bassoon

https://securebooks.in/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Star-Trek-icon-William-Shatner-rockets-into-space-in-flight.jpg

(apologies, didn't realise this was ilb. still, looks like nobody cares about the unheroic space age)

It’s technically on ILB, but no worries. It has been repurposed for wider usage.

mr veg gave me Andrew Chaikin’s “A Man on the Moon” for Christmas :D

Excellent. Although be forewarned that it does take its time, um, getting off the ground.

Roger.

Can I get a readout on that POLL rollout alarm.

we got you. we’re go on that alarm

:)

I’m only a little way in but god Chaikin is such an effective writer, and structures the narrative so well to keep you wanting to read more - i love that he’s not drowning you in backstory, keeping The Guys front & center, what theyre thinking/feeling & just kinda peppering in backstory where it’s important/illuminating

Yeah, that is definitely the most detailed telling of the story that I came across but he totally keeps things moving along.

today’s notes

i enjoy the synchronicity of having a Chuck Berry AND a Sam Phillips on the Apollo mission staff

:D

i do not enjoy the waste management system

(technically this was yesterday)

Today is the 49th anniversary of the Skylab strike, the first strike in space. Astronauts protested micromanagement, employer spying, and long hours. They demanded a day off, breaks, and greater autonomy, NASA refused so they struck. NASA gave in to their demands after one day. pic.twitter.com/YtT7yDqdI4

— EddieDempsey (@EddieDempsey) December 29, 2021

my favorite detail from the Chaikin book so far is Ed Mitchell’s secret ESP experiments during Apollo 14

(sorry it’s kinda long) (but worth it)

Monday February 1, 1971  7:37 am Houston Time, 16 hours, 35 minutes Mission Elapsed Time.

…(Stu) Roosa noticed a light coming from underneath the right hand couch, where Ed Mitchell was in his sleeping bag. Roosa assumed Mitchel had turned on his flashlight because he’d gotten tangled in a strap. He could not have guessed the real reason Mitchell was awake , that he was conducting his own private experiment in extrasensory perception, unknown to anyone except a handful of people on earth.

… About three weeks before the flight, a chance conversation inspired Mitchell to take advantage of the fact that he would become one of the few human beings to leave the planet. As some of his colleagues knew, Mitchell had long been fascinated by the study of psychic phenomena, for which neither science nor religion offered a satisfying explanation. He’d become acquainted with a couple of surgeons in Florida who shared his interest. Together they wondered, was it possible to transmit thoughts across a hundred thousand miles of space? In the midst of the all-consuming preparation, Mitchell told them “Line up some people and we’ll do a little experiment on the flight.”

And so they did. Each night of the trip to and from the moon, Mitchell planned to perform the experiment, waiting until forty-five minutes past the start of the sleep period, when he had privacy and quiet. He kept his plan a secret from NASA, knowing that the agency would be completely unreceptive to the idea. He said nothing about it to his crewmates. The test subjects had also agreed to keep quiet. And Mitchell wasn’t worried about what would happen if someone found out: with all the cancelled missions he was already certain that Apollo 14 would be his only spaceflight.

Now, floating in his sleeping bag, Mitchell pulled out a small clipboard bearing a table of random numbers. Each number designated one of the standard symbols used in ESP experiments: a circle, a square, a set of wavy lines, a cross, a star. Mitchell chose a number and then, with intense concentration, imagined the corresponding symbol for several seconds. He repeated the process several times, with different numbers, knowing that on earth, four men were sitting in silence, trying to see the pictures in their own minds. After several minutes of this, Mitchell put the paper away and closed his eyes.

Pg 355-357 A Man on The Moon, Andrew Chaikin

https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/scratchpad/images/c/cd/Peter_Venkman.png/revision/latest?cb=20171215052040

https://scratchpad.fandom.com/wiki/Peter_Venkman?file=Peter_Venkman.png

https://nerdist.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/ghostbusters-bill-murray-esp.png

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_U5y3K8Oaw

Astronaut Mark Kelly once smuggled a full gorilla suit on board the International Space Station. He didn't tell anyone about it. One day, without anyone knowing, he put it on. (source: Reddit) pic.twitter.com/v7aVunL7QF

— SPENCE, TODD (@Todd_Spence) January 9, 2022

i have watched that video SO many times
fkn hilarious

Rolling Obituary Thread 2023

^ death of Apollo 7 astronaut Walt Cunningham

I hadn't checked in with LM5's YT channel in awhile and completely lost a day watching his Top 100 Space Moments video series. Really well done and even with footage I hadn't seen before.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYIiMRdcIAQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbMRyri3q8I

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cimWUVqQy70

Fell into another YouTube hole - this time on the Homemade Documentaries channel. Outstanding quality with footage I've never ever seen before. Charlie Duke himself started commenting on his Apollo 16 doc. His Voyager doc is better than anything I've seen come out of NASA.

RIP Ken Mattingly, bumped from Apollo 13, eventually flew to the moon on Apollo 16, stayed around for a couple of shuttle flights. (Gary Sinise played him in Apollo 13), 87.
https://www.nasa.gov/humans-in-space/astronauts/former-astronaut-thomas-k-mattingly-ii/

aw RIP

Rolling Obituary Thread 2023

^ Frank Borman obit and links posted by Elvis T

Borman did release his own book in 1988: Countdown: An Autobiography - iirc it's pretty much a downer. If you read his NASA oral history interview, he's the super-intense military guy who you want commanding the first crewed flight of a Saturn V to the moon (when Anders sees Earthrise and starts taking pictures, Borman immediately says "hey, that's not scheduled") - but his own book is the super-intense military guy trying to figure out why his home is broken, why his wife is an alcoholic, and why the Eastern Airlines unions really hates his guts. Spoiler alert: he hates their guts too.

I have heard several interviews with Borman. He came across as someone who spared no one's feelings, including his own, and gave not an inch to sentiment. Even his description of seeing Earth from space was prosaic. He did have a lot of interesting stories, though.

i guessed "manned" isn't strictly correct: https://crookedtimber.org/2024/02/19/death-lonely-death/

anyway, an evocative post from a site i only very rarely check these days, abt the tin can we threw furthest

Poor voyager

y'all have seen The Farthest right?
https://www.pbs.org/the-farthest/

This one is good too. I drive past the office building featured in this a couple times a week

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6L9Du_IFmI

Love The Farthest.

What video is that, Elvis? Stupid YT is geoblocking it.

it's the trailer for It's Quieter In The Twilight - a 2022 doc about Voyager's flight team. It's streaming in a couple of different places, but you can find it on the torrents

Cheers!

I think I posted this one before? The Homemade Documentaries YT channel has been making space documentaries that are routinely superior to any of the NASA ones - especially his Voyager one

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M62kajY-ln0