posted 08-22-2007 02:07 PM               

You can't say a much nicer thing about journalism.

One quibble. the reporter says: "[Carpenter] joined the underwater Sea-Lab exploration after severely damaging an arm in a motorcycle accident that prevented future space flights. 'It kept me out of the Gemini program,' he said. 'I underwent another operation but it didn’t help.'”

Carpenter actually joined the US Navy's Sealab 1 project before the motorbike accident that led to his medically grounding injury. His intention was to do Sealab for a while and then get back into flight rotation at NASA. Training and all.

See the sidenotes at http://scottcarpenter.com/faq.html

Those quote the contemporaneous news accounts both of the accident and the attempts at corrective surgery.

Carpenter went on to command Sealab II off the coast of San Diego, sustaining some bone necrosis during ascent that similarly "grounded" him from saturation diving.

It's interesting, btw, that Cousteau, a former naval aviator, himself went in to underwater work following a grounding injury . . .

posted 08-22-2007 09:28 PM            

But what does "Command One" mean? I wonder if that was a misunderstood reference to the "N-1" designation of the Soviet Saturn 5-class rocket? Maybe in a noisy room, "um, en-wun" sounded like "CommaNd-wun"?

Or have I missed out on a whole facet of Soviet space history? ;)