posted 06-20-2007 07:30 PM            

I'm sure we are all familiar with Shepard's prayer, but I'd like to address a topic that seems to be a bit taboo. Have there ever been any astronauts really "screw the pooch" on a mission? MGA - current day? I seem to remember a reference by someone about a female Shuttle astronaut doing something unwise on re-entry, but either that conversation was shut down or no one else mentioned anything explaining it. I'd be curious to know what that was.

posted 06-21-2007 01:12 PM               

Mike Mullane, in his book Riding Rockets, makes a case for some payload specialists in the 80s having some problems in space. He talked about one PS (no name given) whose experiment failed and was very emotional about it. There was some fear for what this person might do, which led to discussions about locking the hatches during missions (if I remember it correctly).

One may also claim that the Apollo 15 screwed the pooch somewhat with the covers controversy. Granted, they weren't the first crew to do something along those lines. But they were the first crew to be caught and punished for it.

Finally, one may claim that Al Shepard didn't perform as well during his EVAs as he should have during Apollo 14. Spepard made it clear he didn't have much time for the geology/EVA training. Unlike the Apollo 13 crew, who were eager to conduct their geologic explorations (hence their mission motto "Ex Luna Scienta"), Shepard wasn't really interested. He ended up walking in circles (literally) to find Cone Crater, having to eventually give up the search on 60 yards (or so) from the rim. You can hear Ed Mitchell having to motivate Shepard to keep going at some points.

One should keep in mind, however, just how many flights took place where the astronauts performed near perfectly. For example, Gordo Cooper did a magnificent job of flying his Mercury mission, taking over manual control as systems around him died off one by one.

posted 06-27-2007 02:28 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by mjanovec:
Mike Mullane, in his book Riding Rockets, makes a case for some payload specialists in the 80s having some problems in space. He talked about one PS (no name given) whose experiment failed and was very emotional about it. There was some fear for what this person might do, which led to discussions about locking the hatches during missions (if I remember it correctly).

Edited by mjanovec

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posted 07-01-2007 11:12 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by spgrissom:
Granted, SC's choices were not liked by flight and he was viewed as not paying attention but he made it back alive and in one piece. No, he did a great job! Just my opinion.

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Oh I agree too. I was only just remarking that Kraft thought SC screwed up. In my own opinion, any guy who climbed on top of an Atlas rocket and lived to tell the tale did an admirable job.

posted 07-02-2007 07:04 PM               

Let me see if I can work through my confusion here. I think I'l start with the terms used in the OP, which I think might benefit from some parsing and defining and placing in a bit of context.

First, the matter of Shepard's prayer.

According to Tom Wolfe, Shepard had just urinated in his pressure suit after a four-hour hold:

"Compared to the prospect of such a flap, no matter how minor, in the final phase of the countdown, and possible danger of blowing up on the launch pad was far down an astronaut's list of worries. For a test pilot the right stuff in the prayer department was not 'Please, God, don't let me blow up.' No, the supplication at such a moment was 'Please dear God, don't let me f*** up." --The Right Stuff, p. 150, illustrated edition (New York: Black Dog and Leventhal, 2004).

So Shepard's prayer worked for Shepard. But note that it wasn't his blanket prayer for all astronauts for all time. It was his prayer in May 1961, for himself.

Second: "screwing the pooch." This too is discussed in The Right Stuff, on page 182-83 of my illustrated edition (New York: Black Dog and Leventhal, 2004).

Wolfe must have picked up this term at Edwards AFB from Yeager. So that dates the term to ca. 1948 USAF vulgarities. But it makes no sense as a vulgarity. And it sounds a little prissy.

Screw?? And why is "screwing the pooch" supposed to mean total failure and shame? I don't get it.

I mean, what happens if you screw the pooch? Not much. First, this isn't an activity one undertakes, you know, in public. You don't tell people. And the pooch doesn't even end up with puppies that look like you.

So you're ok there. You'd probably beat a court martial on a bestiality rap. The worse thing, I suppose, is that you might pick up some strange cross-species STD. Big whoop. The medics would fix you in a jiffy.

It gets curiouser: "Screw the pooch" appears to have roots in World War II U.S. Navy usage, which uses a true vulgarity (it starts with an "f"--"Effing the dog" was the term).

More important, it was used in a much different sense. It was used to describe the excruciating stretches of loafing and time wasting that Navy men engaged in while waiting for orders or action.

So I don't get it. Sounds like Wolfe conflated Edwards parlance (and the mocking tone) with Langley usage, extending it to all astronauts, navy, marine, and air force. I do not think this is a term that Carpenter, for one, used.

Finally, about the storied Carpenter-Kraft kerfuffle and who screwed what pooch. We've all been over this canard ad nauseam so here I'll merely note a logical fallacy employed by the esteemed mjanovek, whose other posts I've found to be models of logic and judgment.

The logical fallacy at work is the fallacy of moderation, or the fallacy of the golden mean, or of the middle ground.

Here's how it works: Positions A and B are "extreme positions." C is a position that rests in the middle. Therefore C is the correct position.

The difficulty here in Mark's admirable attempt to be neutral is that with Position A (Carpenter successfully flew a difficult mission with incredible aplomb, despite a "mission critical malfunction") is not only not an extreme position, it is the fact, buttressed by countless contemporaneous primary documentation and NASA histories and reports. These documents are cited in Carpenter's biography.

Position B (Kraft's immortal canard, "the man malfunctioned") is in fact an extreme view, one supported only by Kraft saying it, without supporting it, just repeating it with conviction and with something else a little harder to identify. Smells like fear to me, though.

In fact, Kraft's legendary tantrum about Carpenter reminds me a little of the Ambrose Bierce observation about some folks who are just positive about stuff. "To be positive is to be mistaken at the top of one's voice."

So, if the choice is between a reasonable Position A, supported by the facts, and an extreme Position B, supported by nothing more than appeals to authority (another logical fallacy)--his own as Mr. Flight--then the conclusion is pretty simple.

But, hey, that's just me.

This is a long post. I have more to say about using the boards to start threads on possible pooch screwers. Nothing heavy. I'll leave it for later.

ON EDIT: Asked the DP about these fascinating language issues. As it happens, he served in the US Navy during World War II.

He remembered the WWII USN usage but added that "It changed" and became "screw the pooch" -- in use "service-wide," he said, in the country and Langley by the time of Project Mercury. I remonstrated, "But 'screw the pooch'? It makes no sense!" reprising my arguments (above).

He responded patiently: "Well, it's wrong to screw the pooch. You don't want to do that." I had to concede his point. But I still wonder why the original Navy construction for loafing and time wasting morphed in to one describing a total screw up.

posted 07-03-2007 05:11 PM               

"Who screwed the pooch?" ever, in the entire history of the U.S. space program?

This broad and generally derogatory framework invites cSers to submit ill-sourced anecdotes and gossip and canards about people now gone, with no way to defend themselves, or about people still with us, many of whom don't have surrogates to defend them.

Pooch screwing is pretty well covered in the vast literature on spaceflight history, including The Right Stuff and a number of memoirs. But come armed with skepticism as you read the various accounts.

I'd start with the NASA reports and then books produced by reputable publishers that show evidence of having been rigorously fact-checked. Assertions of fact, too, should be well-sourced. Not, "I heard" or "Some say."

Interpretive conclusions should be fact-based and plausible.

Watch out for fallacious arguments, loaded questions that assume facts not in evidence (e.g., "When did you stop beating your wife?")--stuff like that.