Count of Surviving Veterans Merc/Gem/Apollo

I count 43 men who flew on Mercury through Apollo-Soyuz, of whom ten are
dead (Shepard, Grissom, White, Conrad, Eisele,Swigert, Roosa, Irwin, Evans,
and Slayton) -- anybody get a different number to correct me?

Has to do with a news story about to appear on msnbc.com's sci-tecg site.

Thanks!

Honorees will be through Apollo-17, or 34 men, of whom 25 are alive.



"Jim Oberg" wrote in message
...
I count 43 men who flew on Mercury through Apollo-Soyuz, of whom ten are
dead (Shepard, Grissom, White, Conrad, Eisele,Swigert, Roosa, Irwin,
Evans,
and Slayton) -- anybody get a different number to correct me?

Has to do with a news story about to appear on msnbc.com's sci-tecg site.

Thanks!

In article ,
Jim Oberg wrote:
I count 43 men who flew on Mercury through Apollo-Soyuz, of whom ten are
dead (Shepard, Grissom, White, Conrad, Eisele,Swigert, Roosa, Irwin, Evans,
and Slayton)...

An interesting thought occurred to me while looking at this list...

Is Scaled Composites's Mike Melvill currently the only man alive who has
flown a suborbital spaceflight?

(That is, to have reached 100km without going on to orbit?)

Shepard and Grissom, who flew the suborbital Mercury flights, are dead.
So is Joe Walker, the only X-15 pilot to reach 100km. The Russians didn't
do manned suborbital flights as a preliminary to their orbital flights,
and apparently neither did the Chinese. The US has never had a suborbital
abort. The one thing I'm not sure about is whether Lazarev and Makarov,
the crew of the April 1975 suborbital Soyuz abort, are still alive.
--
"Think outside the box -- the box isn't our friend." | Henry Spencer
-- George Herbert |

The one thing I'm not sure about is whether Lazarev and Makarov,
the crew of the April 1975 suborbital Soyuz abort, are still alive.

Lazarev died in 1990, Makarov more recently.

Michael Cassutt

On Fri, 16 Jul 2004 19:59:33 +0000, Jim Oberg wrote:

I count 43 men who flew on Mercury through Apollo-Soyuz, of whom ten are
dead (Shepard, Grissom, White, Conrad, Eisele,Swigert, Roosa, Irwin,
Evans, and Slayton) -- anybody get a different number to correct me?

Has to do with a news story about to appear on msnbc.com's sci-tecg
site.

Thanks!

After reading your post "Astronauts, Cronkite to get moon rock plaques", I
set about trying to remember all the names myself. I too have counted 43
up to 1975 but cannot remember the name of one of the rookies on Skylab. I
know I can look it up and am certianly not asking, but want to recall it
myself. Very sad I know, I hope I can remember it before it really bugs
me.

--
+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+
| Dave Downing, Somerset U.K. |
+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+

On Fri, 16 Jul 2004 22:37:51 GMT, (Henry Spencer)
wrote:

In article ,
Jim Oberg wrote:
I count 43 men who flew on Mercury through Apollo-Soyuz, of whom ten are
dead (Shepard, Grissom, White, Conrad, Eisele,Swigert, Roosa, Irwin, Evans,
and Slayton)...

An interesting thought occurred to me while looking at this list...

Is Scaled Composites's Mike Melvill currently the only man alive who has
flown a suborbital spaceflight?

(That is, to have reached 100km without going on to orbit?)

Shepard and Grissom, who flew the suborbital Mercury flights, are dead.
So is Joe Walker, the only X-15 pilot to reach 100km. The Russians didn't
do manned suborbital flights as a preliminary to their orbital flights,
and apparently neither did the Chinese. The US has never had a suborbital
abort. The one thing I'm not sure about is whether Lazarev and Makarov,
the crew of the April 1975 suborbital Soyuz abort, are still alive.

If Apollo 13 had not gone into a parking orbit first, could it have
been considered a sub-orbital flight?

- Rusty Barton

In article ,
Rusty Barton wrote:
(That is, to have reached 100km without going on to orbit?)

If Apollo 13 had not gone into a parking orbit first, could it have
been considered a sub-orbital flight?

*Probably* not. Its initial lunar trajectory was an Earth orbit with a
very high apogee and a perigee that was *probably* above the atmosphere,
so it was a proper orbit. There would be some room for debate about the
details, though, were the matter not settled by starting from a parking
orbit.
--
"Think outside the box -- the box isn't our friend." | Henry Spencer
-- George Herbert |

On Fri, 16 Jul 2004 22:37:51 GMT, (Henry Spencer)
wrote:

In article ,
Jim Oberg wrote:
I count 43 men who flew on Mercury through Apollo-Soyuz, of whom ten are
dead (Shepard, Grissom, White, Conrad, Eisele,Swigert, Roosa, Irwin, Evans,
and Slayton)...

An interesting thought occurred to me while looking at this list...

Is Scaled Composites's Mike Melvill currently the only man alive who has
flown a suborbital spaceflight?

(That is, to have reached 100km without going on to orbit?)

Shepard and Grissom, who flew the suborbital Mercury flights, are dead.
So is Joe Walker, the only X-15 pilot to reach 100km. The Russians didn't
do manned suborbital flights as a preliminary to their orbital flights,
and apparently neither did the Chinese. The US has never had a suborbital
abort. The one thing I'm not sure about is whether Lazarev and Makarov,
the crew of the April 1975 suborbital Soyuz abort, are still alive.

Early in the Mercury program, NASA planned to use Jupiter IRBM's as
Mercury suborbital launch vehicles.

The Jupiter biological flight of monkeys Able and Baker flew 1,700
miles downrange and reached a speed of 10,000 mph. On re-entry, the
monkeys experienced 38-g's.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter...ogical_Flights

Redstone flights only went 300-miles downrange at 5,100 mph. Shepard
and Grissom experienced about 11 g's on reentry on those flights.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_3

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_4

How was NASA going to use the Jupter in a Mercury suborbital flight?
Did NASA expect to fly longer suborbital flights at higher speeds and
G-forces than the Redstone delivered?

-Rusty Barton

Rusty Barton wrote in
:

On Fri, 16 Jul 2004 22:37:51 GMT, (Henry Spencer)
wrote:

In article ,
Jim Oberg wrote:
I count 43 men who flew on Mercury through Apollo-Soyuz, of whom ten
are dead (Shepard, Grissom, White, Conrad, Eisele,Swigert, Roosa,
Irwin, Evans, and Slayton)...

An interesting thought occurred to me while looking at this list...

Is Scaled Composites's Mike Melvill currently the only man alive who
has flown a suborbital spaceflight?

(That is, to have reached 100km without going on to orbit?)

Shepard and Grissom, who flew the suborbital Mercury flights, are
dead. So is Joe Walker, the only X-15 pilot to reach 100km. The
Russians didn't do manned suborbital flights as a preliminary to their
orbital flights, and apparently neither did the Chinese. The US has
never had a suborbital abort. The one thing I'm not sure about is
whether Lazarev and Makarov, the crew of the April 1975 suborbital
Soyuz abort, are still alive.

If Apollo 13 had not gone into a parking orbit first, could it have
been considered a sub-orbital flight?

It could have been considered a suborbital flight if it had stayed on a
free-return trajectory throughout, but it did not:

http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/history/...apollo-13.html

"Before the explosion, at 30 hours and 40 minutes, Apollo 13 had made the
normal midcourse correction, which would take it out of a free-return-to-
Earth trajectory and put it on a lunar landing course. Now the task was to
get back on a free-return course. The ground computed a 35-second burn and
fired it 5 hours after the explosion."

Of course, all this hinges on how "suborbital trajectory" is defined. Here
is the FAA definition:

http://ast.faa.gov/files/pdf/FAA_Sub...efinitions.pdf

"The FAA regards a suborbital trajectory as the intentional flight path of
a launch vehicle, reentry vehicle, or any portion thereof, whose vacuum
instantaneous impact point (IIP) does not leave the surface of the Earth.
The IIP of a launch vehicle is the projected impact point on Earth where
the vehicle would land if its engines stop or where vehicle debris, in the
event of failure and break-up, would land. The notion of a ‘‘vacuum’’ IIP
reflects the absence of atmospheric effects in performing the IIP
calculation. If the vacuum IIP never leaves the Earth’s surface, the
vehicle would not achieve Earth orbit and would therefore be on a
suborbital trajectory."

Under this definition, a free-return lunar trajectory would qualify, but
I'm not sure it's possible to boost *into* a free-return trajectory without
the vacuum IIP intersecting the moon, at least briefly, near the end of the
burn.

--
JRF

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check "Organization" (I am not assimilated) and
think one step ahead of IBM.

In message , Rusty Barton
writes
On Fri, 16 Jul 2004 22:37:51 GMT, (Henry Spencer)
wrote:

In article ,
Jim Oberg wrote:
I count 43 men who flew on Mercury through Apollo-Soyuz, of whom ten are
dead (Shepard, Grissom, White, Conrad, Eisele,Swigert, Roosa, Irwin, Evans,
and Slayton)...

An interesting thought occurred to me while looking at this list...

Is Scaled Composites's Mike Melvill currently the only man alive who has
flown a suborbital spaceflight?

(That is, to have reached 100km without going on to orbit?)

Shepard and Grissom, who flew the suborbital Mercury flights, are dead.
So is Joe Walker, the only X-15 pilot to reach 100km. The Russians didn't
do manned suborbital flights as a preliminary to their orbital flights,
and apparently neither did the Chinese. The US has never had a suborbital
abort. The one thing I'm not sure about is whether Lazarev and Makarov,
the crew of the April 1975 suborbital Soyuz abort, are still alive.

If Apollo 13 had not gone into a parking orbit first, could it have
been considered a sub-orbital flight?

It nearly did so when the Saturn V engine went into POGO (assuming they
got out)
--
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