R.I.P. Thomas Kenneth Mattingly

[Arneb]

Aka TK or Ken at NASA - but call him the Man Who Never Caught Rubella.

Mattingly was slated to fly as CMP on Apollo 13; but when Charles Duke, Captain of the backup crew, fell ill with Rubella, Mattingly was found to have no immunity. Not wanting to risk a sick CMP during a Moon flight, NASA removed Mattingly from the roster and sent Jim Swigert instead.

Mattingly, deeply depressed about his removal at first, turned out to be one of the most important assets in the saving of Apollo 13, working feverishly to work out the rescue plan.

He got his moment in the Sun as CMP of Apollo 16, the mission that Swigert would otherwise have been assigned to. He did one quite singular feat during that mission, becoming the first human to EVA in "deep space", retrieving, during the cruise back to Earth, photographic film that had been exposed in an automatic Moon monitoring experiment located on the body of the CM.

Mattingly later also flew on two Shuttle missions. And he never fell ill with Rubella.

Godspeed, TK

[Heid the Ba]

*tips hat*

[Мастер]

And now Frank Boorman . . .

[Arneb]

Indeed. At 95 years of age.

Ever since learning about the Apollo program more in-depth, I admired Borman. He took a wide leap of faith when he agreed to lead Apollo 8 to the Moon, instead of around the Earth with an LM attached (that became Apollo 9) - and all because of rumours that the Soviets were about to launch a manned lunar orbiting mission (which turned out not to be true). He cared deeply about the safety of his crew, and he made a commitment to his family to quit going to space after Apollo 8. I remember his demeanor in the debriefing when he clearly laid out in front of the team how certain parts of the equipment were jsut completely inadequate to the task - more specifically, the fecal collectors. I was always a bit hushed by his seriousness and severity. You rarely see him smile on the Apollo footage, but, having been in the commission investigating the Apollo 1 disaster and being responsible for the CM redesign afterwards, he had no reason to be humorous about something that absolutely had to bring his buddies to space - and back!