{"id":355,"date":"2007-07-27T22:04:00","date_gmt":"2007-07-27T22:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/2007\/07\/27\/355\/"},"modified":"2016-06-05T11:48:50","modified_gmt":"2016-06-05T16:48:50","slug":"355","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/?p=355","title":{"rendered":"THE END OF THE RIGHT STUFF"},"content":{"rendered":"

I got a laugh today reading about the NASA astronauts<\/a> who might have been launched into the heavens after a night of heavy drinking. Supposedly one of these cases involves an American going up in a Russian Soyez capsule to the Space Station. Well hey, you can’t really count that one. He was probably just trying to keep up with his Russian comrads. The Russians probably wouldn’t launch a guy who couldn’t hold his vodka. As to the American Space Shuttle flights, well — remember that the Shuttle holds 7 or 8 astronauts, and most of them don’t do anything during the launch anyway. The thing is so automated that even the pilot pretty much just watches. Therefore, it probably wasn’t such a big deal, so long as the other crew members kept the guy from touching the wrong switch before he would dry out and get over his hangover. Yes, if there was an accident he’d have less chance of getting out alive. But I gather that most Shuttle accidents are fatal. In all of its flights, we still haven’t seen an Apollo 13 situation where something went bad but a lot of struggle and effort eventually brought the ship home safely. <\/p>\n

Well, now that the truth has become public, NASA will have to crack down; the age of “the Right Stuff” will finally be over. According to Tom Wolfe’s book, the true Right Stuff brothers were the rocket plane test pilots of the 1950s, who would stay out until 1 am sloshing down the hard stuff, then be up at 6 in a silvery fire suit, ready to be stuffed into a little winged thermos bottle full of liquid oxygen and other highly explosive stuff. They’d take him and his steed up into the sky attached to the belly of an old bomber plane, then drop him over the desert. He’d hit the switch to fire the rocket engines and then grab the steering stick and try his darndest to keep the little shooting star from flipping over and hurling him into the ground below, to perish in a ball of flame. If luck was with him, he’d be landing the thing in a few minutes with another mighty, heroic tale to tell. If not, his picture would go on the next available slot in the dead test pilot’s hall of fame. <\/p>\n

I suspect that the Space Shuttle guys who had downed the better part of a bottle on the night before launch were trying to re-imagine those days. But obviously they couldn’t. After the sun came up, they were surrounded by a cocoon of computers that would make all the decisions and would determine their fate. The glory of the old days can never be re-lived. But we keep on trying until it’s all shown to be just as silly as it really is. That’s what I see happening in this little NASA tiff about the lack of bureaucratic discipline on the launch site. The bureaucrats have won, as they always must. Enjoy your excitement while you may, for the season of folly is brief.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I got a laugh today reading about the NASA astronauts who might have been launched into the heavens after a night of heavy drinking. Supposedly one of these cases involves an American going up in a Russian Soyez capsule to the Space Station. Well hey, you can’t really count that one. He was probably just […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,21],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=355"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6204,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355\/revisions\/6204"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}