I remember that Bloom County strip.
Well, he stole my joke then, ha! Where’s my check?
I remember the scene from Apollo 13 when they had to do a manual course correction on the way back to earth. For all practical purposes, Lovell was flying by the seat of his pants in a life or death must succeed situation.
All I’m getting at is that until 1947, it wasn’t statutorily a separate service, but sort of somewhere in between being part of the Navy and a totally separate service like the Army.
Either way, the Space Force spun out of the Air Force for similar reasons that the Air Force spun out of the Army. That was the actual point I was trying to make.
I don’t believe that is correct. The U.S. Marine Corps has always been a separate service, and I don’t believe it has ever been part of the U.S. Navy. It is part of the Department of the Navy, which might be leading to confusion.
But the Department of the Navy is not the same thing as the U.S. Navy. Again, the former is led by a cabinet secretary, and the latter is led by an admiral.
Agreed. But keep the USMC out of it. Unlike these other examples, they were not spun out of the U.S. Navy.
One thing that doesn’t get enough attention, they hadn’t had any sleep for several days. Even simple tasks can become torturous when fatigue sets in. Enormous pressure on everyone, a lot of people on the ground didn’t get any sleep either.
What I didn’t quite grok, the entry corridor for a successful splash down is fairly narrow, too steep and things burn up, too shallow and the spacecraft skips off the atmosphere and out into space never to return. There is an optimum angle they strive for, but it’s within a half a degree or so? Something like that. “Civilians” are not necessarily experienced with long periods of sleep deprivation and performing difficult or grueling tasks. At one point Lovell asked mission control to double check his arithmetic. He said if you haven’t slept for a couple days, you start to wonder “3 plus 7 is 10, right??” Yeesh.
It stands to mention military test pilots in the 1960s weren’t just hot shot jet pilots. Many of them held Master’s Degrees and some PhDs in engineering. The Mercury/Gemini/Apollo astronauts were therefore well-qualified and required to be deeply involved in the engineering of their respective spacecrafts and were assigned to work directly with the subcontractors (McDonald Douglas, North American, etc.). For this reason alone, using submariners would have been a no-go.
NASA has the Oral History Project where they’ve archived interviews with all sorts of people involved from the NACA to NASA, management, contractors, and lesser known characters. One thing that strikes me is they all seem to universally love the way it was setup. I suppose it helps to have essentially a blank check from Uncle Sam in terms of funding, but they almost wistfully say that in any large organization, over time, they morph into a bureacratic morass where everyone is in charge, and nobody is in charge, nobody is held responsible for anything, and everyone is responsible. Strangely enough, nothing gets done. Not very quickly anyway. Space is hard, and I think in some ways they “made it look easy” to some degree. They certainly took risks that nobody would countenance today.
The astronauts themselves were directly involved with the nuts and bolts of the construction and switch layout, instruments, escape systems, comms, everything.
One of my favorite anecdotes is when the Nutritionists decreed that Coffee has no caloric value or nutrients, and thus not going to be included on spaceflights. Wally Schirra had enough influence that he had Coffee removed from the Nutritionists office. If it isn’t necessary, they don’t need it either, right? They relented after a few days. Coffee, even if freeze-dried, indeed was included on all the flights. Way to go Wally!