mae lessons from gemini eight

amongst the astronaut corps, one pre-astronaut flyer and another gemini/apollo flyer stand at a level above all others. these two extaordinary individuals not only acted in accordance with their inherent skills but demonstrated under extreme difficulties the capacity to remain rational, calm and objective. both of these astronauts owed their lives on many occassions to such sets of skill values.......

Pretenders to greatness such as Buzz Aldrin ruffle feathers frequently in search of the accolades they feel are genuinely deserved . guys like wally schirra panicked on the second mercury mission and blew the hatch...... alan sheperd blotted his copy book, after flying the first mercury mission, by bringing disrespect to the apollo moon programme when he hit a six iron on world tv.... in reality, light weight avians like aldrin play third rate performances on minor stages in attempts to garner the respect which is/was both self-evident and intuitive with the aforementioned individuals..

Chuck yeager was one cool dude. this guy could fly an X-15 at 100000 thousand feet and 3 mach in the early 50's. no computors, all hydraulics.... he survived countless near misses and was permitted to continue flying only because of his piloting brilliance..... he was reviled by many of his superiors because of his uncanny ability to do it not by the book but still to get it right....

neil Armstrong will be known to all. this guy was the ultimate Mr Cool. he commanded the Gemini 8 mission which was aborted after an unknown fault during docking with an agena rocket which resulted in his craft spinning wildly. the problem seemed to be corrected, only to recur again. the gemini capsule with armstrong and david scott aboard commenced to rotate wildly at one revolution per sec.!!! an inevitable black out was avoided by mr cool converting to manual flying and correcting what the simulators later said was an irretrievable situation....his reward? apollo 11 and the first walk.....

so a quiet oz saturday draws to a close. the point of my ramblings? there are some folks who deserve the respect they are afforded and others who are afforded the level of respect they deserve......

so it is with this forum. i only entered the fray when, to me, it was obvious that the mission was in trouble....it was also obvious that wvb and his crew in huntsville[florida/texas knew what they were doing but were just having a few problems getting it right......

along the way i met my 2 astronauts plus a couple more. one of them, dt, reminds me of yeager....the other, sr, is one miss cool.....
I also met some flyers with both balls and brains- Sleuth6. and that forgotten man who did the first walk in space, only to perish in the apollo 1 fire-pheme.....
their was freida, with fabulous technical info which I always found most impressive.....plus a whole host of other travellers who accompanied me along the way...
it's been fun dealing with most and frustrating dealing with some others.
too many peole want a free lunch, demonstrating a complete lack of understanding of the company, and by extension all the other features i have alluded to....funny how no one laughs about obama anymore.....

i bought most of my tickets a long time ago and will almost certainly wait some time before entering the fray again....

the capable hands of dt, sr and sl6 will guide you all calmly to the awaiting mother lode.......

for me, it's an exit to left field, au revoir and a reminder..... it ain't rocket science!!!!

see ya on the knoll--------------!!!.}