T O P I C R E V I E W |
ASCAN1984 | As many of you may know today (April 1st) is April Fool's Day. This had made me think of the "gotcha's" astronauts were famous for doing in the past. I remember reading that one astronaut came out to his car and couldn't work out for a long time why it just wasn't performing as well. Turns out another had borrowed it and changed the gear ratios and left it back before he even noticed it was gone. I think this happened to Wally Schirra. |
golddog | I believe that one was down to Grissom and Cooper - they organized for Jim Rathmann to change the gear ratios on Shepard's Corvette. |
Lou Chinal | Yeah, it was Shepard's Corvette they did it to. The first space flight 'gotcha' was when Grissom handed Shepard a box of crayons in the elevator on the way up to Freedom 7. |
Fezman92 | Crayons? I don't get it. |
jasonelam | The crayons came from an old joke that Bill Dana (aka Jose Jimenez) created, where he refused to go into space because he had lost his crayons, if I remember correctly. My personal favorite was the gotcha played on Dee O'Hara by Wally Schirra involving a rather large specimen bottle |
brianjbradley | I read a story about Bill Shepherd (pretty sure on STS-27 and not April Fools Day, but a "gotcha" nonetheless) stowing away a piece of sausage from his breakfast and releasing it into the flight deck while his crew mates knew he was using the toilet. It was quickly noticed by his crew mates, who certainly didn't think it was breakfast sausage. He acted panicked (sp?), chased after the floater and to the dismay of his crew members, ate it. |
Fezman92 | What about STS-95 with John Glenn and Pedro Duque? The shuttle boarding pass was a classic. |
moorouge | quote: Originally posted by jasonelam: The crayons came from an old joke that Bill Dana (aka Jose Jimenez) created, where he refused to go into space because he had lost his crayons, if I remember correctly.
Not necessarily a 'gotcha'. In the Mercury days there was one astronaut (Schirra I believe) who was adamant that the colour photography at the time did not capture the colours seen correctly. The recommendation was that crayons should be used. |
pokey | Reisman was scaring his fellow ISS residents with a plastic rat hidden in unexpected places. |
webhamster | quote: Originally posted by brianjbradley: I read a story about Bill Shepherd...
This story is related in Mike Mullane's book.
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SkyMan1958 | Here's one that Gordon Cooper and Jim Rathmann played on Wally Schirra. They smuggled an individual size bottle of Cutty Sark Scotch and a row of cigarettes into a compartment in the instrument panel on Sigma 7. The attitude control handle in the spacecraft had a "remove before flight" tag as well. Schirra found the items while in flight and was Quite amused. Schirra drank the scotch as soon as he could aboard the recovery carrier and kept the cigarettes and tag as mementos. I won the cigs at RR's January auction. |