Extrafamous

More contact with the heroic and outwardly mobile last week, as retired Air Force Lt Gen Thomas Stafford gave us a great talk on Thursday about his life in NASA (he holds the dubious honor of being the first person to drop out of test flight school -- when he got the chance to be an astronaut). Took us back to the days of the Cold War tete-a-tete with the Ruskies, the perilous missions in the Gemini (his partner almost dying trying to figure out how to walk in space, losing 10 pounds in 90 minutes) and Apollo programs. He commanded Apollo 10, the mission before the moon landing, which used radar to map out the landing site from a very low orbit around the moon. While attempting to rendevous with the control module, they had a thruster malfunction and began to tumble uncontrollably, and the General let his displeasure be known, unaware that he was on an open mike to NASA. It thereafter became known as "The X-rated Apollo Mission." Gen Stafford is pictured at right.

He would go on to fly in Skylab, and was instrumental in the first docking in space between two different country's capsules (he's closest to the camera in the famous picture of the opposing commanders shaking hands).

He says some of the former red-blooded communist bastard space counterparts are now staunch capitalist businessmen and some of his best friends..."like brothers."
The General went on to test fly the A-10, F-15, F-16, B-1, and what would become the F-117A, and helped design the B-2 stealth bomber, literally drawing up the specifications for a Northup contractor on a cocktail napkin.

As I like to remind people in these situations, I once built a bedside table out of Dr. Pepper cans.