Ad astra per aspera

[correctiveshoes621]

So, yeah. I have no money to spend, but somehow found six dollars for this:



I didn't get myself a Christmas present, this year, and it was only six bucks, and the anniversary of the Apollo 1 tragedy is coming up, and the shipping was free..and and and and -

Shots of/little info about these brave and beautiful men:



The crew of Apollo 1 - from the left, that's Virgil 'Gus' Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee:



From the top, in same order:



Chaffee, White and Grissom.



Roger Chaffee was the rookie - this would have been his first space flight.
Ed White was the dreamer (in my icon), who performed the first American spacewalk, and said that it was, 'the saddest moment of his life', when he had to get back into the Gemini 4 capsule.
And Gus.
Gus was the veteran - one of the original Mercury 7, and first choice to be the first man to step on the moon - who NOTED all the problems with the capsule, especially with the wiring and excess of velcro, but was quoted by John Young as lamenting that he was afraid to push the issues further (he'd already hung A LEMON on the capsule, and even complained, "Je-sus Christ. I said, how are we gonna get to the Moon if we can't talk between two or three buildings?", in his deep, gravelly voice DURING THE TEST THAT KILLED HIM) because, 'they'll fire me'....You can imagine what was going through his head when he said this -

"If we die, don't mourn us. If we die, we want people to accept it. We are in a risky business, and we hope that if anything happens to us, it will not delay the program. The conquest of space is worth the risk of life. Our God-given curiosity will force us to go there ourselves because in the final analysis, only man can fully evaluate the moon in terms understandable to other men."

- a mere three weeks before the fatal 'plugs-out' test that killed them.

Their, 'parody' crew shot...kinda tells the tale..





Rest in peace, boys.

January 27, 1967



In other space-type news, I want to go HERE - -

http://www.waymarking.com/waymarks/WM2XXY_Lockheed_Martin_King_of_prussia_Pennsylvania_Sycamore_Moon_Tree

- - In 1971, Stu Roosa, the Command Module Pilot for Apollo 14, took about five hundred tree seeds into lunar orbit. They were distributed across the country, but, alas, they've really only kept records on about forty of those. There are FIVE, 'Moon Trees' - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_tree - in Pennsylvania, and this one is the closest.

I want to find it, steal a seed, and grow a second generation Moon Tree. I think that mon Bernard would have gotten a kick out of that :)