Aboard STS-51-A, November 1984:
Dale Gardner: So Joe, now that we used our awesome MMUs to get these busted satellites, what do we do with them?
Joe Allen: How about we put an ad in the Houston Chronicle and get some serious dough for them?
Dale Gardner: I’m down for that, let me just draw up a FOR SALE sign real quick and you take the picture.
Rick Hauck: Fellas, no go on the sale…
Dale & Joe: Way to be a buzz kill Rick!
STS-62-A
Planned Launch Date: July 1986
Crew:
MSE = Manned Spaceflight Engineer
This Department of Defense mission (using Discovery) was intended to deploy the classified Teal Ruby reconnaissance payload. It would have been the first manned polar-orbit mission launched from Space Launch Complex 6 at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Most of the core crew (Mullane, Ross, and Guy Gardner) would fly on STS-27 in 1988, Bob Crippen would later become director of the Kennedy Space Center, and Ed Aldridge would become Secretary of the Air Force in June of 1986.
*Bob Crippen contacted noted space artist Tim Gagnon for patch design ideas, which are shown below:
More information about the mission and its artwork can be found here at spacepatches.nl
*This is the end of our post-Challenger cancelled mission series. Hope you enjoyed it!
This blog is a tribute to NASA's Group 8 Astronaut Class of 1978. Known as the Thirty-Five New Guys (TFNGs) to the public, these awesome men and women helped to deliver NASA from the Apollo era to the threshold of the International Space Station.
All pictures on this site are courtesy of NASA unless otherwise noted.
