On 2016-12-09 11:03:09 -0800, "Byker" <byker@do~rag.net> said:
>
>
> "Savageduck" wrote in message
> news:2016120815555088480-savageduck1@REMOVESPAMmecom...
>>
>> Yup!
>> I was thirteen on that day, and I also held my breath with that com;
>> "God speed John Glenn".
>> That lift off changed everything. However, Shepard, Grissom, and Glenn
>> might have been our first, but Gagarin was the man who first
>> transcended science and fiction.
>
> Just three months before, a squirrel monkey named "Goliath" died when his
> Atlas booster malfunctioned and had to be destroyed. The front page of our
> local paper showed a photo of the flaming debris raining down. Sad for an
> eight-year-old to see (I remember hearing my mother say, "Poor little
> monkey,") and I'm sure millions were praying for John Glenn's safe return
> after seeing so many Atlas blow-ups.
>
> I was surprised to find the film footage on YouTube:
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0Po2hX-_qI
>
> Back then as many as one in four launches ended in failure:
> http://tinyurl.com/jujbg26
>
> <image>
The one bad joke I remember from those days, when we were playing
catchup with the USSR post Sputnik, was with regard to the Vanguard
with its silly failure rate:
"NASA is going to rename the Vanguard "Civil Service" because they
can't fire it, and they can't get it to work."
<https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/62/Vanguard_rocket_explodes.jpg>
--
Regards,
Savageduck
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