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