USA Today: Columbia disaster stranded three men in space with 'no return ticket'

Jim Oberg wrote:

Despite the inherent danger, the Soyuz became the only hope to return
Bowersox, Budarin, and Pettit home."

A scenario I would like to have seen:

"This is Mission Control. Bowersox, Budarin, and Pettit, we have great
news for you! You won't have to ride that old-fashioned Soyuz! Even
though the Columbia just disintegrated, and we're nowhere close to
fixing that design flaw, we think we can ready another Shuttle for you
very soon and send it up to rescue you!"

"Oh, yeah? On second thought--we've decided we're going to ride the
Soyuz. Thanks anyway."

:-)


--
Steven D. Litvintchouk
Email:
Remove the NOSPAM before replying to me.

My favorite is the book where the X-1 gets dropped off the B-52 mothership.
I know it's old, but not quite _that_ old. :-)
(Can you imagine the effect on Japanese morale if a squadron of those
had shown up over Tokyo?)

Pat

LOL...They were pretty upset when the B two nine showed up (BEESONS)
they use to call them...the 52 would have been a real shock...

Well said.

Robert

David Spain wrote:

There are worser :-) spell checkers out there. I particularly
find noteworthy those that tell you it's spelled wrong but *don't*
provide alternatives.

sattelite no
satalite no
satellitite no


This is supposed to be the advanced form of Mozilla, which in itself is
supposed to be the advanced form of Netscape Mail.
I have contacted Thunderbird regarding the perceived shortcomings I
have found in its spell check program.
The communication read something like this:
"U sucking Dior knobs, if id waited sum sorted forum off a Beatrix spill
chick pogrom, id wood have requisitioned it's."

Pat

Brian Gaff wrote:

Over here we call that type of sensationalism, 'over egging the pudding'.

:-)

Brian


That's for sure. They made it sound like the men up there were stranded
with, say, only a few hours of oxygen or some such and were thus in
serious danger....

"Borderline" wrote:



My favorite is the book where the X-1 gets dropped off the B-52 mothership.
I know it's old, but not quite _that_ old. :-)
(Can you imagine the effect on Japanese morale if a squadron of those
had shown up over Tokyo?)

Pat

LOL...They were pretty upset when the B two nine showed up (BEESONS)
they use to call them...the 52 would have been a real shock...

B-San, not Beeson.

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL

Jeff Findley wrote:

Yea, that Soyuz is so bad it's safety record is essentially statistically
identical to the shuttle's.

Is it time for that argument again already?

--
"Checking identity papers is a complete waste of time. If anyone can
be counted on to have valid papers, it will be the terrorists".

Mary Pegg wrote in
:

Jeff Findley wrote:

Yea, that Soyuz is so bad it's safety record is essentially
statistically identical to the shuttle's.

Is it time for that argument again already?

Nope. The argument is settled; Jeff is correct.


--
JRF

Reply-to address spam-proofed - to reply by E-mail,
check "Organization" (I am not assimilated) and
think one step ahead of IBM.

I read the bad reactions here to the USA Today review and
sensationalized jacket blurb on this thread when it came up in March,
but I was still intrigued enough to pick up this book recently, and I
have to say, as a space layman, I've quite enjoyed it.

To enjoy it yourself though, you do first need to get past the
elephant in the room: The Expedition Six crew were never, of course,
"stranded," and author Chris Jones admits as much, while still
ludicrously overplaying the dangers of the crew's Soyuz lifeboat.
(Even at that though, Jones includes some harrowing stories of rarely-
discussed near-disasters on earlier Soyuz flights.)

But once I got past the silliness of the "stranded" bit - which in any
case doesn't take up that much space, and which somehow feels as if
it's been played up at the urging of an editor - I found the book to
be a pretty rollicking tale, containing some of the best-ever
descriptions of the sights, sounds, tastes, smells, and actual feeling
of life on a space station. Salyut, Skylab, and Mir all get great
discussions too, and Jones' account of the oxygen generator fire and
Progress collision onboard Mir are especially hair-raising. The
retelling of unplanned and off-target ballistic reentry of Expedition
Six' Soyuz will also definitely hold your attention.

"Too Far" also shares many of the same strengths, and weaknesses, of
other mass-market space books, especially those of Jones' most obvious
inspiration, Tom Woolf's "The Right Stuff," which differentiate these
accounts from inside-baseball tales of former NASA employees. Most
notably, technical matters are sometimes garbled, glossed-over, or
flat-out exaggerated. And even here, there have been insider tales
full of gobbledygook, like that lamentable Gordon Cooper book where he
went on about space aliens and cover-ups. (BTW, I noticed that
obituary writers were uniformly kind in not mentioning *that* thing
when Cooper passed away.)

On the upside, like Woolf, Jones seems to have a hell of a lot of fun
in his telling, and as an outsider, gets to be much more indiscreet in
discussing the various personalities involved. For example, it's hoot
read about old-school "astronaut socials," sixties holdovers which
still sometimes raise their Brylcreemed heads in southern Houston.
Invitations can even specify "church dress," which is something that
is probably intuitively obvious to the wives of the traditional test-
pilot astronaut types. But to the spouses of the diverse and crowded
astronaut class of 1996, the term "church dress" meant what, exactly?
Writes Jones of their conundrum: "No one wanted to stand out, at least
for the wrong reasons, and that included their wives showing too much
tit."

Also enjoyable are the the many pages devoted to the definitely not-
from-the-same-old-cookie-cutter science officer of Expedition Six, Don
Pettit, and to his wife Micki. I remember watching him on NASA TV
during his mission, and frequently wondered to myself, "Who the hell
is this guy?" At least on the space-to-ground loops, he seemed to have
a slight lisp, and on a nutty-professor air about him. It seems from
this book that what you see is what you get: Pettit comes off as a
brilliant tinkerer, probably one with more than a touch off A.D.D.,
and it was a series of happy accidents that landed him on ISS during
that fateful mission.

Pettit's bride, Micki, also breaks the mold of the prototypical
astronaut wife. Who couldn't love a woman who shouts "Go you ****er!
Go, go, go!" as the shuttle carrying her husband finally lifts off;
and who - on what she thought was a private home video-conference with
her orbiting husband - playfully flashes him a bit of titty, only to
get a message the next day from NASA "technicians," advising her that
she may want to check the security of her bathrobe before the start of
the next video-conference with her husband.

So I'm gonna give "Too Far From Home," a qualified, if quite
enjoyable, thumbs up.

Now my question. I'm an airline pilot. And like most people who have
some knowledge of a specialized technical field, I find myself picking
apart news stories, books, and movies having to do with my field of
knowledge, commercial aviation in my case, always saying to myself
things like "They wouldn't really do/say/act like that," or simply
"That's wrong." (The movie "United 93" being one big exception.)

Unfortunately, I'm just a space enthusiast, and not an expert, so to
those on the list who are and who may have read this book, I'm
wondering if you might enlighten me on some of the technical errors in
Jones book, outside of the obvious and previously mentioned "stranded"
thing. I just finished it and don't' want to commit to memory any
stories with no or little basis in fact.

Thanks in advance!






On Mar 20, 1:51 am, "Jim Oberg" wrote:
[JimO: I suspect that I don't 'recall' this fact because -- well, it's not
and never was a 'fact'...grin]

USA Today: Columbia disaster stranded three men in space with 'no return
ticket'

Book review: "A smart read. The narrative is lively and informed.. [Few
Americans] recall that the [Columbia] tragedy strand[ed] two U.S. astronauts
and one Russian cosmonaut aboard the International Space Station. For nearly
six months and 250 miles above Earth, they had no return ticket."

Too Far From Home: A Story of Life and Death in Space, By Chris Jones
Doubleday, 284 pp., $24.95...

Thanks, Landings! Strong argument for
more attention to this work.