posted 09-02-2004 12:39 AM               

quote:

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Originally posted by Tom:
McDivitt was offered the LMP position on Apollo 13 with Shepard as CDR, but I don't think he was offered the CDR position after they turned down Shepard.

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posted 09-02-2004 11:06 AM               

This is way harsh, as my daughter would say, and also sounds like Deke's, ahem, innovation over time.

The 1959 selection process selected men (and declared in memos it was selecting men) who were likely to stay healthy and likely to remain in the astronaut corps for at least ten years. Anticipating more than a decade of service from the seven it chose helped NASA justify the enormous costs of training ($1 million per man in 1959 dollars). Gilruth expected Group 1 astronauts to be in the mix for lunar missions.

But NASA needed more astronauts, to be sure, once the lunar program was announced in 1961--Al couldn't do it all by himself, after all. Still, the accession of Groups 2 and 3 did not superannuate Group 1, as Deke's words to Wally suggest. Imagine Deke saying these words to John Glenn, or Al Shepard.

As it happened, time and chance "superannuated" some of the Mercury guys(Carpenter, 1964 accident, medical grounding; Glenn, 1963 JFK assassination, early retirement; Grissom, 1967 Apollo 1 fire, death; Shepard, 1963?? temporary grounding, Menieres). Wally and Gus were the only ones who stayed healthy until, well, until one of them died, and the other retired. Glenn regained his flight status as a Marine, but by that time had retired from the astronaut corps. Al too recovered to fly in space again. But not Carpenter, as has been discussed elsewhere.

Deke may have "superannuated" other astronauts against their will, like Cooper, simply because he could. And the record's pretty clear that he would have tried to do the same (denied flights) to his first peers, the Group 1 astronauts, had they asked for a flight. Again, because he could.

posted 09-02-2004 02:42 PM               

"As it happened, time and chance 'superannuated' some of the Mercury guys (Carpenter, 1964 accident, medical grounding; Glenn, 1963 JFK assassination, early retirement; Grissom, 1967 Apollo 1 fire, death; Shepard, 1963?? temporary grounding, Menieres). Wally and Gus were the only ones who stayed healthy..."

My apologies: I omitted Cooper here, who maintained his flight status and health (no injuries or illnesses as far as I know) until retiring.

And Slayton -- the other Mercury astronaut I neglected to mention in the health summary, eventually regained active-duty status--as we all know; Gs at launch by then, however, had become only about four times the normal gravitational load.

posted 09-02-2004 02:57 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by KC Stoever:
Interesting that more than half the original Seven (Carpenter, Glenn, Grissom, Slayton) failed to provide the hoped-for ten-year + active-duty careers in the astronaut corps. But only one of these, Grissom, due to his fatal exertions on behalf of the space program and the country.

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posted 09-02-2004 04:18 PM               

Thanks for any help. I have packed my copy of DEKE!

posted 09-02-2004 05:33 PM            

According to the book, Deke took the test in December 1971 which allowed a doctor to sign his health recertification. The official announcement was made on March 13, 1972, as it coincided with a Skylab press conference, but that was apparently a release of news that was already internally agreed by then - he was back on flight status.

The chest X-ray immediately following ASTP in 1975 turned up a benign but previously undetected spot on his lung, which Deke says would have grounded him pre-flight if detected. So he was probably off flight status once again at that moment (a moot point, as there was nothing else to fly for the rest of the decade). He went into running the ALT program, then in 1977 moved into managing orbital flight test at the Cape. He "dropped a few hints" around 1980 about flying a Shuttle mission, but had no response. He officially retired from NASA in 1980, but actually stayed under a special consultancy arrangement until 27 Feb 1982.