posted 02-21-2019 08:27 PM            

Was the issue that he would have been a "rookie" commander? Skylab 4 had a rookie commander (Carr). I would have thought that after all those years with the NASA and the space program, and knowing this would be in all likelihood his only spaceflight that NASA would have allowed him that honor.

posted 02-21-2019 09:23 PM               

Slayton accepted Kraft's recommendation. But they weren't through yet. "One more thing. I've got the seniority to command this mission. Seniority does count. I've never used it before, but I've got it and I'm using yet now."

Kraft turned him down. Tom Stafford had both the experience and the all-important relationship with and the trust of the Russians.

posted 02-22-2019 12:03 AM            

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Originally posted by Paul78zephyr:
That doesn't make sense in light of "rookie" Carr having been commander of Skylab 4.

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I would have thought that after all those years with the NASA and the space program, and knowing this would be in all likelihood his only spaceflight that NASA would have allowed him that honor.

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posted 02-22-2019 07:59 AM               

Sometime after the official agreement, in May 1972, Kraft asked me for my recommended assignments. With the understanding that it was up to him, I made them:

ASTP (prime crew) Slayton-Swigert-Brand
(backups) Bean-Evans-Lousma

Right after 17, Chris Kraft called me into his office. There I found him with Tom Stafford and Vance Brand. "You guys are the crew for Apollo-Soyuz" he said. It was good news and bad news, because Chris went on to explain that Tom was being assigned as commander of the mission: I was the docking module pilot.

It was a little deflating - hell, here I was, the Senior American astronaut - but I understood the reasoning. If you're going to fly a high-profile international docking mission, you want an experienced pilot commanding the thing. And Tom was one of the best.

Not only that, but he had been sent to the USSR in June 1971 for the funerals of Dobrovolski, Volkov and Patsayev. That particular assignment wasn't anything he lobbied for; he just happened to be available. Nevertheless, he had already met several cosmonauts and Soviet space officials. I accepted the decision. What the hell ... flying is flying. And I was finally getting a chance.

posted 02-22-2019 11:11 AM            

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Originally posted by David C:
That's the same, to my mind faulty, way of thinking that got Shepard to Fra Mauro.

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Armstrong didn't land where he was supposed to either, Bean killed the TV camera, Young tripped over the ALSEP cable, Cernan crashed a helicopter in the Banana river while hotdogging — we can argue all these points forever.

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You should select the best available and willing person to command a multi-millon dollar spacecraft...

Part of me figures that a rookie got Skylab 4 because none of the remaining experienced guys wanted 84 days in a tin can.

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"84 days in a tin can." Wow — is that how you boil down the accomplishments of Skylab? Gee it must be like pulling teeth trying to find people to go to the ISS for a few months.

posted 02-22-2019 07:29 PM            

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Originally posted by Paul78zephyr:
I don't understand this statement at all...

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Your last statement makes no sense either in light of your second statement and you are making assumptions.

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Wow — is that how you boil down the accomplishments of Skylab?

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There's no shortage of ISS volunteers, so what? Today's ISS crews are a different breed with different attitudes. They can only aspire to missions that are available. Some may be hoping for more in the future, but sure, of course they want to fly to the ISS. It's what they were recruited to do.

Put another way, NASA isn't currently recruiting people that don't want to go to the ISS! It doesn't follow that people recruited at a different time for different missions would look as favourably on the prospect of an ISS expedition as the current crop of serving astronauts.

posted 02-23-2019 06:07 PM            

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Originally posted by Kite:
I am delighted Deke Slayton finally got his space flight.

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posted 02-23-2019 10:33 PM               

Many times, I used my "Deke Slayton story" in my patient teaching about atrial fibrillation. After touching on the physiology and treatments for AF, I would tell about Deke's personal experience, how he was grounded, how he persevered, and how he finally got to realize his dream.

posted 02-27-2019 11:24 AM               

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Originally posted by Paul78zephyr:
That doesn't make sense in light of "rookie" Carr having been commander of Skylab 4.

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Deke created a precedent, but did not work.

posted 02-28-2019 01:00 AM               

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Originally posted by David C:
His grounding (unlike Shepard's) was medical nonsense, and although the damage couldn't be undone, he deserved it as restitution.

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The decision to ground Slayton divided medical opinion with several eminent doctors expressing concerns that a flight might have an adverse effect on a pilot with Slayton's infrequent heart anomaly. This being the case, at the time and in the very early days of manned space flights, it was deemed prudent not to take an unnecessary risk.

posted 02-28-2019 08:05 AM               

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Originally posted by carmelo:
Deke would have been on time to commander Skylab-4 if he wanted?

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But even if Slayton's clearance had come earlier, it is questionable if the flight surgeons would have approved him for the long-duration Skylab 4 mission. The Apollo-Soyuz Test Project was a shorter mission and for that NASA's flight surgeons had him fly with heart medication as a precaution, as reported by The New York Times:

Whether the doctors would decide to prescribe any drug in space would depend on circumstances as they watch the crew's tlemetered electrocardiograms during the nine‐day flight.

posted 02-28-2019 10:37 AM            

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Originally posted by moorouge:
One has to be very careful about decisions made at the time and saying that they were nonsense in the light of subsequent knowledge.

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People seem to forget that aviators had been subjected to negative, zero and positive gravitational accelerations for decades. All of a sudden zero g became a medical bogie man for people that should have known better. From the experience of people that had actually been subjected to "zero gravity" (admittedly, for short durations) it was obvious that you didn't suddenly stop breathing, swallowing, seeing, thinking or anything else. All those "problems" were postulated "what ifs", based on no actual evidence.

Slayton just got caught up in this, fictitiously based, medical over cautious, (I'll say it again) nonsense. The actual evidence at the time - from Slayton's own flying career and medical testing was that it wasn't a problem - as subsequently proved beyond any doubt in 1975. The whole thing reminds me strongly of the similar pseudo-scientific nonsense about the non-existent "sound barrier" back in the '40s. Again, the wrong, ill-informed, wrongly motivated voices having the loudest say.

posted 03-01-2019 01:28 AM               

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Originally posted by David C:
Slayton just got caught up in this, fictitiously based, medical over cautious, (I'll say it again) nonsense... Again, the wrong, ill-informed, wrongly motivated voices having the loudest say.

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The initial reaction was that this condition was of "...no consequence." This view was supported following a review in January 1962. However, when asked, the three top cardiologists in America felt unable to say categorically that Slayton would not be affected by this condition on his forthcoming Mercury flight. Their recommendation was that if NASA had an available astronaut who did not fibrillate it would be better to use them a view supported by Eisenhower's personal physician who agreed that there was nothing diagnostically to prevent Slayton flying it might be a wiser course of action not to add one more unknown to the many that already existed.

posted 03-01-2019 07:49 AM            

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Originally posted by moorouge:
It is worth remembering that Slayton was not grounded by this but replaced. He remained on flight status and available for selection throughout.

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posted 03-01-2019 11:14 AM               

It was James Webb who asked for a review and three boards concluded that he was "...fully qualified as an Air Force pilot and as an astronaut."

posted 03-04-2019 09:31 AM            

(In many aspects, it was thanks to Slayton's power that Shepard (who definitely had supporters in top brass, too) was made Apollo commander without serving his turn as a backup.)

So when Slayton left Flight Operations, Kraft's clear plan was to "destroy" the Slayton's position (clearly illustrated by the fact that Conrad, when attempted to take over Slayton in Flight Ops, was told there will be no equivalent power in that position anymore (interesting to notice, though, that same Kraft re-considered this when he assigned Abbey to even more powerful position few years later.) It looks like that the main agenda back then was typical bureaucratic "elimination" of Deke as a power. While this is a pure guessing, but Kraft would hardly be too enthusiastic to make Slayton as a CDR.

Also, while Stafford was already engaged with Russians (his participation in 1971 funeral of deceased Soyuz 11 crew in Moscow), this could have put him in a different category of "political" appointees, augmented with his own political connections (remember he was then thinking of becoming a politician). As I see it, these two factors influenced assignment of Stafford and Slayton as commander and docking module pilot respectively.

posted 03-04-2019 12:28 PM            

In Slayton's case, that particular missing finger was not considered critical as it was not used when flying an aircraft, and he was cleared to be a test pilot. (What the heck is the difference between spaceflight and test flight?)

posted 03-04-2019 04:01 PM            

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Originally posted by moorouge:
There is a big difference between short spells of high g — forces as experienced by pilots and the prolonged time spent during a space flight launch and recovery.

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Originally posted by moorouge:
However, when asked, the three top cardiologists in America...

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As an aside, one of the tenants of operational risk management in today's navy is to make decisions at the right level (the lowest), not to boot it upstairs to the brass hats. They may well be experts on politics, but not operations and technology.

Senior doctors were asked to provide impossible guarantees. They were only ever going to reply one way and that wasn't going to be to publicly put their reputations and careers on the line. We could go round this all day, but let's not.

posted 03-05-2019 11:29 AM            

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Originally posted by ashot:
What is strange, in my opinion, is the fact that while already having an experienced commander for ASTP, Swigert was originally considered as command module pilot.

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posted 03-06-2019 05:28 AM            

The story of "sending a poor Jack around the Moon again" (as per Deke!) reminds me a bit of the story of having Lovell in Armstrong's crew for Apollo 11. What would be the reason to reassign Swigert to Apollo 16 (of course, after Apollo 13), when there was unflown, well-trained [and somehow suffering] Mattingly, who was kicked off his original flight? Perhaps, only the strong personal request from crew commander (which fortunately never happened neither in Apollo 11 [Lovell vs Aldrin], nor in Apollo 16 [Swigert vs Mattingly]).

Indeed, the sentiment about Swigert and ASTP in "Deke!" is clear, and it does have a good reasoning, as for Slayton, Swigert and Brand combination it would be logical to have at least one flown (and more importantly, docking-experienced) crewmember.

posted 03-06-2019 07:51 AM            

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Originally posted by star61:
In defence of Carr. Shepard, Grissom, Glenn, Carpenter, Schirra, Cooper, Mcdivett, Borman, Armstrong all rookies on their first flights as commander. First rendezvous and docking crew, first EVA, longest mission... all rookie crews.

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posted 03-06-2019 05:48 PM               

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Originally posted by Skylon:
The recent biography of George Abbey indicates...

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