posted 06-15-2022 06:53 PM               

Please note: It's 2 AM here and I can't sleep due to pain. I usually talk too much but when I'm like this I really talk too much.

By the way, why didn't the Soviets try suborbital flights? Was it because the spacecraft would have to land in Siberia which was forbidding and unreliable or that they had enough faith in their R7 rockets so they didn't have to?

Did the Soviets have enough jizz in their R5 rockets to launch manned craft? The Redstone could launch a suborbital manned craft before the Atlas could orbit one. I guess we were behind because we were ahead if that makes any sense.

Americans then never knew how well off we were. I used to drive British cars from the 50s and 60s (a 1956 Hillman Husky, '58 Austin Healy bug eye Sprite I bought for $75 when I was in high school and a '60 Morris wagon) which were remarkably crude compared to what American working people were driving. I used to tell my fellow hippies how lucky they were to live here and compare the Sprite - with its screw on sliding plastic windows and lanyard door latches - to the '57 Plymouth Fury with big fins and the '66 Dodge with the huge mill, a 343, my old man drove. In '53 he had a 4-hole Buick rag top that could park the Husky sideways in the front seat. I have to say, though, that Sprite fished in a lot of girls!

I did get a copy of the family coat of arms. Stameys have been infesting North America since the 1660s. The name was originally Stamford but one branch of the tribe was disgraced by someone who was the first man hanged in North Carolina so they shortened it to Stamey. The family motto is "Ebrius Vel Ex Oppido Non Computat" which translates to "Drunk Or Out Of Town Doesn't Count". Truer words were never spoken.

I notice more and more people now accept that Scott Carpenter, despite some errors, did a hero's job piloting his stricken craft home. I feel he proved he had the right stuff when his life was even more at risk when during a critical phase of re-entry - no control fuel left and the craft oscillating wildly - he imitated Bill Dana's Jose Jiminez saying "Oh I hope not".

I think Chris Kraft was shameful in his treatment. This may be another of my off-base ideas but Kraft may have been covering his backside because Carpenter reported the automatic control problem to the ground. Kraft should then have monitored fuel consumption much more closely than he did. Post flight Carpenter pointed out the need for a detent to differentiate high and low thruster fuel use. This was important with the gloves used.

Other astronauts made serious errors (for example Shepard's lack of interest in geology and the introduction of gas into the ASTP cabin) without Kraft losing his mind. This isn't to say Carpenter didn't make mistakes, but he wasn't "one of the boys" and my opinion is that his reputation was tainted by groupthink. They were throttle jockeys and he was an explorer. In early NASA days the twain often didn't meet.