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Author
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Topic: Plan for flights if no Mercury astronauts?
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yeknom-ecaps
Member Posts: 669
From: Northville MI USA
Registered: Aug 2005
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posted 08-30-2017 09:20 AM
   
Came up in a conversation that NASA supposedly had a plan for who would fly first into space if something happened to all the original seven astronauts. I had not heard of such a plan before.Anyone know of such a plan, and if it did exist, who would have been the first to fly? |
Michael Cassutt
Member Posts: 358
From: Studio City CA USA
Registered: Mar 2005
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posted 09-02-2017 11:53 AM
My information may not be complete, though I have a good feeling about it — never heard of this, can't imagine why it would be worth discussing. If you had two pilots assigned to a program, you might ponder your choices if both were lost. But seven at one time?And if, say, all seven had been lost, NASA would have gone back to the original group of 18 Mercury finalists and selected replacements. |
fredtrav
Member Posts: 1677
From: Birmingham AL
Registered: Aug 2010
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posted 09-02-2017 06:43 PM
They had another astronaut chosen in 1961, Ed Dwight. Though I do not know how much training they had given him, and being black would they have ever even considered him. |
Robert Pearlman
Editor Posts: 43576
From: Houston, TX
Registered: Nov 1999
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posted 09-02-2017 06:53 PM
Dwight was not selected to be an astronaut, though he was promoted as such for political reasons. He was accepted into the Aerospace Research Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base, but so were others.If NASA had a plan for replacing its Mercury astronauts, one might expect it to have surfaced in the discussions following Deke Slayton's grounding, but I don't recall any such talk about reserves or backups (other than the other Mercury astronauts themselves). |
Lou Chinal
Member Posts: 1332
From: Staten Island, NY
Registered: Jun 2007
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posted 09-09-2017 06:26 PM
I never heard of such a plan. |
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