LIVING APOLLO ASTRONAUTS
As of 21 March 2024

*Walked on the moon

Jim Lovell (Gemini 7, 12, Apollo 8, 13) - 95
*Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin (Gemini 12, Apollo 11) - 94
*David Scott (Gemini 8, Apollo 9, 15) - 91
Bill Anders (Apollo 8) - 90
Fred Haise (Apollo 13) - 90
*Harrison Schmitt (Apollo 17) - 88
*Charles Duke (Apollo 16) - 88
Russel Schweickart (Apollo 9) - 88

Also see:
Vance Brand (ASTP) - 92

David Carson
--
Dead or Alive Data Base
http://www.doadb.com

In article <392pviputc712t922cb559lhp5tfpvoi95@4ax.com>,
David Carson <davidc@wa-wd.com> wrote:
>LIVING APOLLO ASTRONAUTS
>As of 21 March 2024
>
>*Walked on the moon
>
>Jim Lovell (Gemini 7, 12, Apollo 8, 13) - 95
>*Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin (Gemini 12, Apollo 11) - 94

To the best of my knowledge, Aldrin is the only person to have been both on
the moon and on Tattletales.

--
The randomly chosen signature file that would have appeared here is more than 4
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Much value your updated NASA roster, David! [And as always since my first perusing it, Sir Carson, I continue to appreciate your top-notch DeadOrAlive website.]

Always glad to see the name of Charles Duke in the media. It's true that astronaut Duke only launched once--but WHAT a single-instance blast-off, culminating in his reaching the lunar surface on Apollo 16, lunar buggy and all--and unfortunately, it's seldom noted that Charlie Duke along the way also managed to generate arguably the greatest quote in NASA history.

The ever-folksy Duke, a native North Carolinan was hardly a broadcaster by trade--but whom yet was nonetheless the verbal author of my all-time fave NASA pronouncement. Mid-way through the historic week Apollo 11 was aloft, Duke delivered an utterly-inspired utterance, though it was in simple reply to the first substantive words dispatched to earth, once the Apollo 11 lander had safely settled onto the Sea of Tranquility.

Some relevant background: one of NASA's best ideas EVER was not in the least technological, but rather totally rooted in human organizational theory. NASA brass astutely figured out early on that having an engineer--or even worse, some typical, scientifically-illiterate BROADCASTER--serve as Capsule Communicator would be a profoundly bad idea.

For the crucial role of what was known as every mission's "Cap-Com", NASA recognized if calamity were to strike (as it would so spectacularly more than once during the several scary days of the Apollo 13 crisis), what was most needed was a fellow astronaut serving as the verbal link between the spacefaring crews and Ground Control down in Texas. The idea was to have someone on the Earth-based microphone who could mentally place himself in whatever situation the guys were so claustrophobically dealing with up there.

Mike time is precious indeed when there's only one verball link with the capsule, exchanges which often relay complex instructions from Mission Control to the guys up there. (This is all as opposed to putting some engineer in the slot, who knew the technology inside-and-out but never developed the verbal skills--types common among engineers--to effectively serve as the crew's conduit.

More background: another candidate for the SECOND-most celebrated NASA statement would be "Godspeed, John Glenn" [at the outset of the third human Project Mercury launch, uttered by fellow Mercury 7 astronaut Scott Carpenter as Cap-Com from launch control]. And, of course, those fateful twin announcements, first by Jack Swigert and then repeated by Commander Jim Lovell after re-transmission request from Earth: "Okay Houston, we've had a problem here..." and "Ah, Houston, we've had a problem." [From Apollo 13, enroute to the moon.]

But MY all-time personal favorite NASA quote remains what Duke said, apparently impromptu, from Earth many hours before that most-quoted statement of the Space Age, Armstrong's flubbed* first line approaching midnight from Apollo 11. Now, EVERYONE knows Armstrong's boots-down line by heart: "I'm gonna step off the LEM now...That's one small step for man**, one giant leap for mankind."

Of course, Armstrong and Aldrin had touched down several hours before, late on Sunday afternoon Eastern Daylight Time, July 20, 1969. And it's true that Buzz Aldrin--mother's maiden surname Moon!--sent back the first words from the lunar surface, but that was technical data voiced by Aldrin ["Contact light--okay, engine stop; ACA out of detent; modes control both auto, descent engine command override, off. Engine arm off. 413 is in."]. And protocol mandated that Commander Armstrong had then the privilege of proclaiming what ranks as ANOTHER candidate for all-time second-ranked pronouncement: "Tranquility Base here, the Eagle has landed.".

All this added up to how future moonwalker Charles Duke found himself situated as Cap-Com for on that afternoon of July 20th. And how did Duke so Southern-accentedly reply to Armstrong's emphatically-delivered lead-off lunar line? "Roger, Tranquility, we copy you on the ground. You got a lot of guys about to turn blue; we're breathing again--thanks a lot!"

SO: when Armstrong radioed*** their successful landing back to Earth, Duke's perfectly-on-point response not only confirmed Earth-bound receipt of Apollo 11's good news, but ALSO thereby served to instantly unite those three astronauts' collective feat--NEVER forget that Michael Collins alone above in lunar orbit was all-along adding vital backup to Armstrong and Aldrin--with the many headset-wearing guys with him in the Mission Control auditorium specifically, but also IMPLICITLY every one of the many thousands of NASA folk anywhere around the globe who had ALSO for months or even years on end contributed to this Moment for the Ages!

Further, Armstrong's vastly more-celebrated words were NOT impromptu; later in interviews he claimed he hadn't even thought much about (much less decided upon) what his first words with boots on the ground would be until the hours-long interregnum between landing and bootprints. More than once Armstrong insisted he only started ruminating about what he'd first say down on the surface once he and Aldrin had concluded conducting the complex powering-down process after touchdown. So again, Armstrong's famed quote was at least mentally REHEARSED--whereas Duke seems to have came up with his witty words ON THE SPOT.

Sure wish THIS now-out-to-pasture broadcaster had even occasionally demonstrated non-broadcaster (but world-class spaceman****) Charlie Duke's wonderful way with words.

BRYAN STYBLE/Florida
=================
* Armstrong's flub was that he MEANT to say, "one small step for a man"--though there IS some historical debate as to whether NASA's voice-activated microphone used in those days may have "clipped" transmission of Armstrong's all-important article word "a".
** That missing article "a" remains critical decades later, because WITHOUT it, "man" in that grammatical context is semantically identical to "mankind"...thus rendering Armstrong's historical pronouncement at best a redundancy and certainly lame prose.
*** One of the reasons this inveterate "radio guy" prefers that earlier Armstrong/Duke exchange is because, quite unlike Armstrong's televised descent down the LEM's ladder hours later just before midnight late Sunday night, the afternoon landing exchange between Armstrong and Duke was accompanied by ZERO live images from the moon, thus making it a pure RADIO broadcast. And any media maven worth his salt understands radio is far superior to TV as a communications medium, simply proved by that famous anecdote about how radio "has better pictures".
**** I'm fairly certain Spaceman Bill Lee was never even considered by NASA for the Cap-Com gig...but the zany lefty phenom--and pothead All-Star in Kansas City in 1973!--was sure fun to behold atop the Fenway Park pitcher's mound whilst I was enrolled at adjacent Boston University during the mid-70s.

On Sun, 24 Mar 2024 20:17:08 +0000, bryan_styble
<radioactiveseattle@hotmail.com> wrote:
>Some relevant background: one of NASA's best ideas EVER was not in the least technological, but rather totally rooted in human organizational theory. NASA brass astutely figured out early on that having an engineer--or even worse, some typical, scientifically-illiterate BROADCASTER--serve as Capsule Communicator would be a profoundly bad idea.

I was too little to remember much about the moon landings. It wasn't until
I watched Apollo 13 that I realized there was a Capcom. I decided that the
idea of having one and only one person who was allowed to talk to the
astronauts was a very good one. An even better idea was separating Capcom
from the flight director's job. They could have messed that up in a lot of
ways, but they got it right.

David Carson
--
Dead or Alive Data Base
http://www.doadb.com

Oh, and while we're rhapsodizing about words heard during NASA missions:

Ever wonder if, while staring up at the Moon with wonder (as all 18th and 19th Century folk surely often did), Sam Houston ever imagined that his family surname would be among the first words said on the lunar surface?

Sam Houston was born in March 1793 in Virginia and died at age 70 in Huntsville, Texas--though presumably not the state's execution chamber (often reported as the nation's busiest during the 20th and 21st Centuries). Houston died during the Civil War on Sunday, July 26, 1963 [four days before industrialist Henry Ford's birth, as it happened]...though his state had by that point quit The Union and joined the other 10 Confederate States of America. And along the way (and among several other, less prominent political posts), Houston would twice serve as President of the independent nation The Republic of Texas, later be elected governor* of the Lone Star State, and was a future U.S. Senator from Texas to boot (and probably in his boots in all four offices).

AND JUST MAYBE, statesman Houston might have had these improbable thoughts sequencing through his mind while moon-gazing some night:

You know, all that has to happen for my family name Houston to be someday spoken up there on the Moon is:

(1) The technology to get up there must be developed--and then somehow engineered into reliable spacefaring vehicles;
(2) Some future politician from Texas has to reach national office (perhaps as Veep under, say, a upward-looking Senator-turned-President from Massachusetts);
(3) That President has to appoint that Veep to nominally run his administration's Going-to-the-Moon Department (or whatever it ends up being named, who knows, maybe something like The National Aeronautics and Space Administration);
(4) That President has to then leave office, perhaps by assassination (maybe by, say, a young Shakespearian actor from a famed theatrical family or, maybe, alternatively, some Marine who defected to Russia but then who in turn defected back to the U.S.A.), thus elevating his space-agency-tending Vice President into the White House;
(5) The imperatives of political patronage would then naturally assure that that escaping-Earth's-atmosphere federal agency, whatever its acronym, be based in some Texas city, quite likely a burg named in my honor as a two-time Republic of Texas President; and
(6) The guys selected to fly around up there fall into the habit of referring to that huge aerospace installation back on Earth by the verbal shorthand of the name of the city it's located in.

Quite a 19th Century brainstorm for Sam Houston, admittedly--but just those mere six steps (Houston might have thought to himself) and next thing you know, it's "Houston, Tranquility Base here."

Of course, better than a century later, Neil Armstrong would neglect to add "Houston", and then ALSO forgot to insert the article-word "a". Some guys just can't be relied upon to do anything right.

BRYAN STYBLE/Florida
=================
*Oddly enough, Houston had been ALSO elected Governor of Tennessee in 1827 (only to resign THAT office in 1829), and thus has the distinction of being the only person in American history to be elected Governor of two different states.

On Mon, 25 Mar 2024 01:28:06 +0000, bryan_styble
<radioactiveseattle@hotmail.com> wrote:

>Oh, and while we're rhapsodizing about words heard during NASA missions:
>
>Ever wonder if, while staring up at the Moon with wonder (as all 18th and 19th Century folk surely often did), Sam Houston ever imagined that his family surname would be among the first words said on the lunar surface?

Galveston was Texas' most populous city until the hurricane of 1900
devastated it. It was decided to rebuild the port in Houston, which led to
that city's explosive growth. If not for the hurricane, the first word on
the moon may have been derived from the name of the 49th viceroy of New
Spain, Bernardo de Galvez.

David Carson

--
Dead or Alive Data Base
http://www.doadb.com

David Carson <davidc@wa-wd.com> wrote:
> On Mon, 25 Mar 2024 01:28:06 +0000, bryan_styble
> <radioactiveseattle@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>>Oh, and while we're rhapsodizing about words heard during NASA missions:
>>
>>Ever wonder if, while staring up at the Moon with wonder (as all 18th and 19th Century folk surely often did), Sam Houston ever imagined that his family surname would be among the first words said on the lunar surface?
>
> Galveston was Texas' most populous city until the hurricane of 1900
> devastated it. It was decided to rebuild the port in Houston, which led to
> that city's explosive growth. If not for the hurricane, the first word on
> the moon may have been derived from the name of the 49th viceroy of New
> Spain, Bernardo de Galvez.

Since the followup devastation of Hurricane Ike,
Galveston is not even the most populous city in
its county.

But they still have the nominal cathedral of the Archdiocese of
Galveston-Houston,whose offices moved in the 1950s while the see
was still suffragan to its once-daughter diocese of San Antonio.

I've thought that perhaps the worst plausible natural disaster
to potentially strike the U S of A would be a new hurricane
that gets as powerful as Rita at its peak (worst Gulf hurricane
ever) as fast as Wilma did (fastest intensification of a tropical
cyclone ever) at a time when many are not paying attention,
finishes off Galveston,heads up the Ship Channel (thereafter
Shipwreck Channel) and then stops over Houston and blows and
rains itself out.

-=-=-
The World Trade Center towers MUST rise again,
at least as tall as before...or terror has triumphed.

bryan_styble <radioactiveseattle@hotmail.com> wrote:
> Oh, and while we're rhapsodizing about words heard during NASA missions:
>
> Ever wonder if, while staring up at the Moon with wonder (as all 18th and 19th Century folk surely often did), Sam Houston ever imagined that his family surname would be among the first words said on the lunar surface?
>
> Sam Houston was born in March 1793 in Virginia and died at age 70 in Huntsville, Texas--though presumably not the state's execution chamber (often reported as the nation's busiest during the 20th and 21st Centuries). Houston died
> during the Civil War on Sunday, July 26, 1963

Um...

> [four days before industrialist Henry Ford's birth, as it happened]...

If he had lasted until 1963 he would have survived Henry Ford by quite a bit,
and almost JFK.

> though his state had by that point quit The Union and joined the other 10 Confederate States of America.

Over his powerless objections.

> And along the way (and among several other, less prominent political posts), Houston would twice serve as President of the independent nation The Republic of Texas, later be elected governor* of the Lone Star State, and was a
> future U.S. Senator from Texas to boot (and probably in his boots in all four offices).
>
> AND JUST MAYBE, statesman Houston might have had these improbable thoughts sequencing through his mind while moon-gazing some night:
>
>
> You know, all that has to happen for my family name Houston to be someday spoken up there on the Moon is:
>
> (1) The technology to get up there must be developed--and then somehow engineered into reliable spacefaring vehicles;
> (2) Some future politician from Texas has to reach national office (perhaps as Veep under, say, a upward-looking Senator-turned-President from Massachusetts);
> (3) That President has to appoint that Veep to nominally run his administration's Going-to-the-Moon Department (or whatever it ends up being named, who knows, maybe something like The National Aeronautics and Space Administration);
> (4) That President has to then leave office, perhaps by assassination (maybe by, say, a young Shakespearian actor from a famed theatrical family or, maybe, alternatively, some Marine who defected to Russia but then who in turn defected back to the U.S.A.), thus elevating his space-agency-tending Vice President into the White House;
> (5) The imperatives of political patronage would then naturally assure that that escaping-Earth's-atmosphere federal agency, whatever its acronym, be based in some Texas city, quite likely a burg named in my honor as a two-time Republic of Texas President; and
> (6) The guys selected to fly around up there fall into the habit of referring to that huge aerospace installation back on Earth by the verbal shorthand of the name of the city it's located in.
>
> Quite a 19th Century brainstorm for Sam Houston, admittedly--but just those mere six steps (Houston might have thought to himself) and next thing you know, it's "Houston, Tranquility Base here."
>
> Of course, better than a century later, Neil Armstrong would neglect to add "Houston", and then ALSO forgot to insert the article-word "a". Some guys just can't be relied upon to do anything right.
>
> BRYAN STYBLE/Florida
> =================
> *Oddly enough, Houston had been ALSO elected Governor of Tennessee in 1827 (only to resign THAT office in 1829), and thus has the distinction of being the only person in American history to be elected Governor of two different states.

Maybe Mitt Romney can run for governor of Utah.

-=-=-
The World Trade Center towers MUST rise again,
at least as tall as before...or terror has triumphed.

bryan_styble <radioactiveseattle@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> But MY all-time personal favorite NASA quote remains what Duke said, apparently impromptu, from Earth many hours before that most-quoted statement of the Space Age, Armstrong's flubbed* first line approaching midnight from Apollo
> 11. Now, EVERYONE knows Armstrong's boots-down line by heart: "I'm gonna step off the LEM now...That's one small step for man**, one giant leap for mankind."
>
>
> BRYAN STYBLE/Florida
> =================
> * Armstrong's flub was that he MEANT to say, "one small step for a man"--though there IS some historical debate as to whether NASA's voice-activated microphone used in those days may have "clipped" transmission of Armstrong's all-important article word "a".
> ** That missing article "a" remains critical decades later, because WITHOUT it, "man" in that grammatical context is semantically identical to "mankind"...thus rendering Armstrong's historical pronouncement at best a redundancy and certainly lame prose.

Arthur C. Clarke,in his 1976 book IMPERIAL EARTH,refers in his text to the flub:

As always,Duncan listened for that missing "a" before the word
"man",and as always,he was unable to detect it.A whole book had
been written about that odd slip of the tongue,using as its starting
point Neil Armstrong's slightly exasperated "That's what I intended
to say,and that's what I thought I said."

In the book's closing acknowledgements Clarke writes that this remark by
Armstrong was made to Clarke at a July 1970 NASA conference.

-=-=-
The World Trade Center towers MUST rise again,
at least as tall as before...or terror has triumphed.

On Mon, 25 Mar 2024 16:00:30 -0000 (UTC), Louis Epstein
<le@main.lekno.ws> wrote:

>David Carson <davidc@wa-wd.com> wrote:
>> Galveston was Texas' most populous city until the hurricane of 1900
>> devastated it. It was decided to rebuild the port in Houston, which led to
>> that city's explosive growth. If not for the hurricane, the first word on
>> the moon may have been derived from the name of the 49th viceroy of New
>> Spain, Bernardo de Galvez.
>
>Since the followup devastation of Hurricane Ike,
>Galveston is not even the most populous city in
>its county.

That isn't because of Ike. The mainland of Galveston County has grown
along with all of Houston's other outer suburban areas, while the city
of Galveston has been in a slow decline since around 1960. League
City surpassed Galveston in population by 2005. The reasons are
economic, not weather-related. The mainland of Galveston County is
predominantly Republican and prosperous. The city of Galveston is a
longtime Democrat stronghold, and we all know what happens to those
places.

David Carson