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Author
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Topic: Astronauts' famous gotchas, gags and jokes
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ASCAN1984
Member Posts: 1049
From: County Down, Nothern Ireland
Registered: Feb 2002
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posted 04-01-2011 09:23 AM
   
As many of you may know today (April 1st) is April Fool's Day. This had made me think of the "gotcha's" astronauts were famous for doing in the past. I remember reading that one astronaut came out to his car and couldn't work out for a long time why it just wasn't performing as well. Turns out another had borrowed it and changed the gear ratios and left it back before he even noticed it was gone. I think this happened to Wally Schirra. |
golddog
Member Posts: 210
From: australia
Registered: Feb 2008
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posted 04-01-2011 09:23 AM
I believe that one was down to Grissom and Cooper - they organized for Jim Rathmann to change the gear ratios on Shepard's Corvette. |
Lou Chinal
Member Posts: 1306
From: Staten Island, NY
Registered: Jun 2007
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posted 04-01-2011 10:55 AM
Yeah, it was Shepard's Corvette they did it to.The first space flight 'gotcha' was when Grissom handed Shepard a box of crayons in the elevator on the way up to Freedom 7. |
Fezman92
Member Posts: 1031
From: New Jersey, USA
Registered: Mar 2010
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posted 04-01-2011 11:11 AM
Crayons? I don't get it. |
jasonelam
Member Posts: 691
From: Monticello, KY USA
Registered: Mar 2007
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posted 04-01-2011 07:46 PM
The crayons came from an old joke that Bill Dana (aka Jose Jimenez) created, where he refused to go into space because he had lost his crayons, if I remember correctly.My personal favorite was the gotcha played on Dee O'Hara by Wally Schirra involving a rather large specimen bottle  |
brianjbradley
Member Posts: 114
From: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Registered: Dec 2010
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posted 04-01-2011 09:03 PM
I read a story about Bill Shepherd (pretty sure on STS-27 and not April Fools Day, but a "gotcha" nonetheless) stowing away a piece of sausage from his breakfast and releasing it into the flight deck while his crew mates knew he was using the toilet. It was quickly noticed by his crew mates, who certainly didn't think it was breakfast sausage. He acted panicked (sp?), chased after the floater and to the dismay of his crew members, ate it. |
Fezman92
Member Posts: 1031
From: New Jersey, USA
Registered: Mar 2010
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posted 04-01-2011 09:07 PM
What about STS-95 with John Glenn and Pedro Duque? The shuttle boarding pass was a classic. |
moorouge
Member Posts: 2454
From: U.K.
Registered: Jul 2009
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posted 04-02-2011 01:16 AM
quote:
Originally posted by jasonelam:
The crayons came from an old joke that Bill Dana (aka Jose Jimenez) created, where he refused to go into space because he had lost his crayons, if I remember correctly.
Not necessarily a 'gotcha'. In the Mercury days there was one astronaut (Schirra I believe) who was adamant that the colour photography at the time did not capture the colours seen correctly. The recommendation was that crayons should be used. |
pokey
Member Posts: 361
From: Houston, TX, USA
Registered: Aug 2000
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posted 04-04-2011 09:27 PM
Reisman was scaring his fellow ISS residents with a plastic rat hidden in unexpected places. |
webhamster
Member Posts: 106
From: Ottawa, Canada
Registered: Jul 2008
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posted 04-05-2011 07:41 AM
quote:
Originally posted by brianjbradley:
I read a story about Bill Shepherd...
This story is related in Mike Mullane's book.
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SkyMan1958
Member Posts: 867
From: CA.
Registered: Jan 2011
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posted 04-05-2011 01:55 PM
Here's one that Gordon Cooper and Jim Rathmann played on Wally Schirra. They smuggled an individual size bottle of Cutty Sark Scotch and a row of cigarettes into a compartment in the instrument panel on Sigma 7. The attitude control handle in the spacecraft had a "remove before flight" tag as well. Schirra found the items while in flight and was Quite amused. Schirra drank the scotch as soon as he could aboard the recovery carrier and kept the cigarettes and tag as mementos. I won the cigs at RR's January auction. |
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