| From an obit, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05... Walter Schirra; Fifth Astronaut in Space By Patricia Sullivan Washington Post Staff Writer Walter M. Schirra Jr., 84, one of the original seven astronauts and the only man to fly in the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo space programs.... [...] [His second] mission was delayed a second time when the Titan II engines beneath the space capsule ignited at countdown and then shut down. For several heart-stopping minutes, Capt. Schirra and astronaut Tom Stafford, sitting atop a highly explosive mass of rocket fuel, chose not to pull the ejection handle, which would have scrapped the mission. It was a calculated risk. Capt. Schirra trusted that the booster rocket would not explode and that the first attempt to rendezvous with another spacecraft, Gemini 7, could still occur. The risk paid off, and three days later, the launch was successful. Asked later what he thought while sitting on the launchpad, Capt. Schirra replied, "This was all put together by the lowest bidder." E.g. the story of the reasearch and developemtn of the legendary Apollo Saturn V first stage engines by Rocketdyne, first for the Air Force and then for NASA, is also legendary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-1_(rocket_engine)#History. They used explosives to debug it! That's got to count as a hack.... |