one more great photo before I log off for the night — Mike Mullane and Judy Resnik, a.k.a. “Tarzan and Jane” of the Zoo Crew!
Clowning around in spacesuits is the best kind of clowning around.
IMHO, these guys rivaled Gus/Deke and McDivitt/White in the NASA BFF category.
From Riding Rockets:
Judy finished dressing Hawley but before she could get out of the airlock, I encircled her and pulled her into my front in a writhing hug. She laughed. The embrace was as sensual as a fair maiden hugging an iron-suited knight.
A signed photo of the Mercury Seven astronauts (with Betty Grissom filling in for Gus) at their 25th anniversary reunion in 1984.
Judy Resnik, January 1, 1978
Nice jacket-shirt thingy.
!!!
TFNG selection-year fashions in da house!
From Collectspace, a 1983 photo of the first four shuttle crews.
This picture is flawless.
My babies.
Aw hell yeah.
Happy 61st Birthday to Sally Ride!
*In addition to becoming the first American woman (and youngest U.S. citizen) in space aboard STS-7 in 1983, Dr. Ride was also a nationally-ranked tennis player on the junior circuit as a teenager, and briefly considered a professional career in the sport.
Happy Birthday to the late Dave Walker, who would have turned 68 today.
*In addition to piloting and commanding four shuttle flights (STS-51-A, STS-30, STS-53, and STS-69), Capt. Walker also logged 7,500 hours of flight time in various carrier-based aircraft with the U.S. Navy, call sign “Red Flash.”
Mike Mullane’s humorous take on being Capt. Walker’s T-38 backseater in Riding Rockets:
Day after day, Red Flash and I would take off from El Paso and search the Chihuahuan desert for twelve thousand feet of straight, flat, firm earth. And day after day, I would return to El Paso with my butt cheeks fatigued from an hour of ass-clinching fear. It wasn’t that Dave was a bad pilot. Rather he was too cocky, the type of pilot who thinks he’s bulletproof even when he’s sober. (All fighter pilots think they’re bulletproof when they’re intoxicated.) He was the pilot that backseaters had in mind when they had coined this joke:
Question: “What are the last words a dead backseater ever hears from his pilot?”
Answer: “Watch this.”
I was living that grim joke in Dave’s backseat. When we spied a likely playa from altitude, Dave would say, “Watch this,” and dive for the sand. To my left or right I would see our plane’s shadow paralleling us at 300 knots. It would porpoise over hill and dale, quickly drawing closer and closer as Dave dropped lower and lower, until it finally disappeared underneath us. If our jet had had the curb-feelers of a ’59 Edsel, I would have heard them scratching a warning into the desert a foot underneath us. Our engine exhaust had to be frying lizards, snakes, prairie dogs, and other ground-hugging fauna. And while I was white with fear, Dave was jotting observations about the condition of the terrain on his knee board.
R.I.P.
Happy Birthday to the late Dick Scobee, who would have turned 73 today.
*In addition to piloting the STS-41-C mission and becoming the only TFNG to command Challenger, Lt. Colonel Scobee was also one of only two NASA astronauts (with Gordon Fullerton) to pilot the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft, and was the 747’s pilot on Challenger’s delivery flight to KSC in 1982.
**Your humble webmaster of The F***ing New Guys is also honored to share May 19th as his birthday.
R.I.P.
Happy 67th Birthday to Brewster Shaw!
In addition to piloting the first Spacelab mission (as John Young’s right seat on STS-9), Colonel Shaw also served as an executive with both Boeing and United Space Alliance following his retirement from NASA in 1996.
Shannon Lucid during her work at mission control.
You only wish you were this cool.
First Class
Some of NASA’s first female astronaut candidates take a break from training in Florida in 1978
From left: Sally Ride, Judith Resnik, Anna Fisher, Kathryn Sullivan, Rhea Seddon.
Paging Dr. Lucid…
(via spaceandstuffidk)
Happy (belated) 69th Birthday to John Creighton (shown here skiing on Atlantis’ middeck during STS-36 in 1990)!
*In addition to serving as pilot/commander for three shuttle missions (STS-51-G, STS-36, and STS-48) Capt. Creighton also served as a test pilot for Boeing following his retirement from NASA.
Today in history: Sally Ride & Guion Bluford Jr became the 1st woman & African-American selected for the NASA Astronaut program in 1982.
Actually they were a part of Group 8 (the TFNGs) selected in 1978.
Both made their first space flights in 83, if I’m not mistaken.
*jerk*
i believe on April 19, 1982 they were both tapped to fly. yes, in 1983 ride flew on sts-7 & bluford flew on sts-8.
Hurray for tumblr knowledge, the only thing that’s missing is some eye candy:
Yes, both Sally and Guy’s assignments were announced by George Abbey (then-Director of Flight Crew Operations at JSC) on April 19, 1982. Mike Mullane’s book Riding Rockets tells the story (pages 100-101):
As I drifted from the room, I heard Fred Gregory’s sotto voce growl, “This is bullshit!” His head and shoulders slumped in depression. Another casualty. Then it dawned on me. He had not just been passed over for an early flight assignment. He was black. He had just been passed over as the first African American in space. Guy Bluford would seize that title on STS-8. I was just a white guy. My name would never be on anybody’s Trivial Pursuit card regardless of when I flew. But Guy Bluford would be history. And Sally Ride, as the first American woman in space, would become an icon. Some had lost more than just a mission assignment with Abbey’s announcement. Some had lost history and the payday that came with celebrity. Sally Ride, in particular, had just been handed a free ticket through life. As the first American woman in space she could look forward to book deals, speech honorariums, corporate board seats, and consulting fees that could earn her millions.
(via discoverynews)
[video]
“Taken this morning from atop the Lincoln Memorial as Discovery flew by the National Mall.”
Nice. Think this will get Congress to increase NASA’s budget?
(via lightthiscandle)
It’s a (partial) Zoo Crew reunion as Charlie Walker, Mike Mullane, and Hank Hartsfield of STS-41-D reunite at KSC before Discovery’s ferry flight to the Smithsonian’s Udvar-Hazy Annex in Washington, April 16, 2012.
(Image courtesy of Mike Mullane)
