Illuminati-R-Us

The interplanetary speed record holder (with Apollo 10), the first (with Gus Grissom) to go into space with two people onboard, the 9th moonwalker, and the first commander of a Space Shuttle going to Space (on STS 1, Columbia), the first to serve a meal to a German astronaut (to Ulf Merbold on STS 9 Columbia) died of pneumonia, age 87. Armstrong is the untouchable primus inter pares, but he is sort of is my personal hero among the Apollo astronauts.

Godspeed.

And the only to fly three generations, Gemini, Apollo, and shuttle.
Rest in peace.

As our space pioneers age out and pass on, it makes me think. We often wonder about the newer generations. At this point Korea and Viet Nam were just things they read about in history class, like say the Spanish-American war to us. Even 9/11 occurred before most high schoolers were born.

pretty soon, if not already, our space pioneers will be though of about the same as the Wright Brothers, Lindberg, Earhart. Something in history, nothing to personally relate to. Eventually the history channel will do a documentary, and then wonder if they were really space aliens in disguise.

I doubt the name "Sputnik" even means anything to most under 30 types.

Aw man - another moonwalker gone dammit.

g-one wrote:And the only to fly three generations, Gemini, Apollo, and shuttle.
Rest in peace.

Four if you count the CSM and the LM as two spacecraft (which seems right to me).

Enzo, I think you are completely right - but that process started long ago. I was just a bit too young to be formed by the Apollo experience. I vaguely recall maybe the Apollo 17 splashdown (as a three yo!), but my first real Space memory are the Apollo Soyuz Test Project and the re-entry (cum endless speculation about the location) of Spacelab. For me, the Shuttle is the default spacecraft. That goes as far as my total astonishment at reading that Young, a legendary hero of a bygone era, commanded STS-1. It's nonsense when you do the math, but psychologiacally, it seemed like a "John Glenn goes to Space at 80 as a publicity stunt" type of thing to me. Of course he wasn't even 50 when STS-1 lifted off, but still. Apollo was the deep past for me, someone born in '68.

Kind of like my boy looking at me with a puzzled "Oh, really" expression when I tell him I bought my first digital camera in the year he was born. Film is the deep past for him, even though images of him exist on film.

And, of course, so is 9-11

I am of the space shuttle generation. There's nothing like that, or the earlier programmes, for my kids really. Maybe they'll be on Mars some day, but then my generation thought that we might be, too.

Arneb wrote:the re-entry (cum endless speculation about the location) of Spacelab.

A local band from my youth.

I'm not much older than Arneb but both the Mem and I are space heads, we grew up with Apollo and the Moon landings. I hadn't thought about it but space exploration has so little hold on young people today that I doubt many could tell you which country reached the Moon and how often.

I grew up in the "space age". Space race with the USSR, after watching countless Navy Vanguards blow up, the Army finally got Explorer into orbit, but not before the USSR got Sputnik up. And for that matter, not before the Russians got Sputnik 2 up, with Laika the dog. We finally got a chimp up a couple years later, and brought him back safely, unlike the Russian's Laika.

I made a model of Explorer for school, soldered juice cans together.

Heid the Ba wrote:I doubt many could tell you which country reached the Moon and how often.

You mean that stage in Colorado, or where ever it really was?

Everyone knows it was Nevada, you ignoramus