"There's no question that it was a coffin, and I'd have flown it gladly."
-Frank Borman to Congress, after the Apollo 1 fire
In spaceflight, there are "good" missions and "bad" missions. "Good" missions are the milestones: first man in space, first orbit, first spacewalk, first flight of a new vehicle, first lunar landing, first use of a lunar rover. "Bad" missions are the dull, routine ones: a two-week endurance test, for example, or a repeat flight of the previous mission.
Frank Borman began his NASA career getting bumped from a "good" mission to a "bad" one, and ended it getting bumped from a "bad" mission to a "good" one.
Monday, December 24, 2018
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Image of the Week: Pearl Harbor and the Fog of War
I follow a lot of naval history accounts, so this "Japanese map showing their assessment of the damage done to the United States flee...
-
Every once in a while there's a fortuitous intersection of two unrelated stimuli that provokes a profound reaction and inspires the incr...
-
Back to the very beginning. This is a lie. "The beginning" would surely be a review of Ian Fleming's 1953 novel Casino Royale...