Failure to Launch

That crash didn't happen because a civilian was on board.

 

Really? I always heard she pressed the self-destruct button.

 

Yeah, I just didn't think much of your joke. Or this one, either.

Here's footage of the VIP stand filled with the families that day, including her parents and some of her students, watching the launch.

Humour is subjective, I know. I make jokes that lots of people would consider out of bounds. This is one of my tender spots, that's all.

 

Bit related to all this discussion, I saw First Man this weekend. I thought it was tremendous. The space scenes certainly put you in their seats and you realize just how perilous everything was on those missions. Gosling's great, of course, so is Foy as his wife and the supporting cast. And safe to say any flag outrage still lingering out there from those who didn't see the movie before they started complaining is idiotic.

 

Journalists are prone to black humor, but the one that sticks with me to this day was sitting in the KSC Media Center that morning, waiting for Vice President Bush to arrive. We're all still in a state of shock, reporting on what would probably be the biggest story of our lives. Guy I don't even know next to me says, "Do you know what NASA stands for?" I answered correctly, but he then said, "Need Another Seven Astronauts."

The contrails were still hanging in the sky, buddy. Not appropriate then. Not appropriate now. I'm still haunted by that image in my mind every Jan. 28. (And Apollo 1 on the 27th. And Columbia in February.)

If you were a full-fledged member of the Shuttle press corps, you had probably interviewed one or more of those seven. Chances were good that somebody who lived in your neighborhood was directly involved in the Shuttle program. And the NASA PR folks stationed at KSC were the nicest group of folks, always willing to answer any questions. The entire Space Coast was gutted, and has never really rebounded from that tragic day.

War correspondents and auto racing writers may be the only jobs similar to space flight in never knowing when you might be writing an obituary about the person you just chatted with.

P.S.: We're in Albuquerque for the Balloon Fiesta and two parallel streets here are named Ellison and Osuna. Coincidence, I'm sure.

 

Thanks for putting it into perspective. Yeah, that's just a bad joke at the wrong time; "Keep it to yourself Buddy."

My only perspective comes from The Right Stuff (the book) and I've always felt that being an astronaut was the ultimate challenge into the unknown; especially for the Apollo (and Soyuz) programs, not knowing what was out there and yet knowing the consequences.

 

It's my opinion, but July 20, 1969 will probably be the pinnacle of America's greatness as a country. It's hard to imagine how focused everyone involved with NASA was, from the guy tightening the bolts on the capsule, to the guys in data processing like Dad, to the guys sitting on top of a giant rocket filled with enough flammable liquid to blow them across the Atlantic Ocean.

Everyone involved had a stake in the success or failure of every mission. Elation, apprehension, concern, frustration. It seemed like the emotions of everyone was riding along with those guys in the capsule. It's difficult to explain what's it like to stand in your front yard as a kid and watch history being made -- and the limits of human exploration pushed to the boundaries of technology and physiology.

And before they became the Right Stuff, guys like Glenn, Shepard, Grissom and the others were just poorly-paid test pilots who shopped at the Sears store in Cocoa or ate at cheap burger joints on Merritt Island. My folks said you'd see them all over town and never give it a second thought. Amazing times then.

 

Obviously, my experience is different from yours and Typefitter's. I was in the fourth grade when Challenger exploded, and it was probably some time in March when the bad jokes were making the rounds of the school yard. Obviously, it was a national tragedy. When you're removed from it and grow up with a dark sense of humor to begin with, it just doesn't hit that same tender spot.
Thirty years removed, the jokes are tasteless. The morning of, they're "What the hell are you thinking!?" abhorrent.

 

Oddly enough, I did too. I'd give it a 'good but not great' rating. They definitely did their homework on a variety of subjects. The stupid little detail I was most impressed with is this: I was watching a YouTube video of a Gemini launch and right before ignition, the fuel pump makes a distinctive noise that sounds like a car starting with a loose belt, and they got the noise and they didn't have to.

Apollo 11 is hard to re-tell without turning it into a hagiography for obvious reasons, but the biggest (not particularly obvious reason) problem is that every account I ever read of Neil Armstrong indicates he had a remarkably flat affect. From a dramatic perspective, he has no "range." I can't say I particularly liked that they cast Ryan Gosling here but I don't think anyone portraying him realistically could have been more interesting. Tom Hanks could play Jim Lovell basically however he saw fit because nobody wrote biographies of Jim Lovell. From a technical standpoint, a lot of the space scenes are made deliberately shaky and dark, which serves the theme more than actual accuracy (they had to have lights, they shot damn TV recordings in there).

It's a good movie, but I also liked Apollo 13 more.

 

Just for fun, here's a look at the last Soviet pad abort, from 1983.

At the time the Soviets had a system in which a flight abort could only be called by two separate people on the ground, a procedure which took about 10 seconds.

 

One of the cooler experiences of my life was going to a Soyuz launch. Middle of Kazakhstan. The rocket comes out of its hangar, pulled on a train (with one headlight out, like the train that pulled Gagarin's rocket). We got to stand right next to the tracks with the crew and watch it trundle across the steppes to the launch pad, the same pad they've always used. The rocket was mostly orange, with a big logo for, I think, a swim meet in Kazan. Rocket goes to the pad and gets raised into position. Day before launch, the crew goes into the fire catch below and looks up at the engines purposefully. An Orthodox priest, meanwhile, was driven out to throw holy water at it. His beard was so long it went sideways in the wind.

The night of the launch—it was the middle of the night, pitch black—and we're standing in the grass, Russian-close to the rocket. (Shuttle launches you had to be three or sometimes five miles away. Soyuz, fuck it.) The rocket is now pure white, and, like an idiot, I marvel out loud that they've somehow painted the thing on the pad. It was frost. The whole thing was coated in this perfect layer of frost. It was like a ghost rocket.

Countdown starts. NASA guy next to me leans over and says, "You know, you have nearly as much at stake here as the guys inside," and I was like, "What are you talking about?"

"If this thing blows, we're toast."

That's how close you can stand. That thing lit up, and my balls almost shot out of my mouth.

 

How did the movie treat Buzz Aldrin?
I've been somewhat disappointed in the condescending attitudes shown toward Buzz in several astronaut biographies. Gene Cernan was probably the worst. They considered him an egghead (MIT) and rolled their eyes at the "Dr. Rendezvous" moniker he was given. They just didn't consider him one of "them" because he wasn't a rowdy flyboy.