Alan's Day

[blackshire]

Hello All,

April 12 was Yuri's Night, and today--May 5th--is Alan's Day. If you have a Mercury-Redstone model and your local weather is suitable for rocket flying, today would be a particularly meaningful day to fly it.

[tbzep]

I am soooo ready to retire so that I can launch a rocket on days like this. I'm glad you posted it. I'll be thinking about his contributions today.

[MarkB.]

And have a Dos XX or a Corona.

[blackshire]

I am soooo ready to retire so that I can launch a rocket on days like this. I'm glad you posted it. I'll be thinking about his contributions today.Thank you. I'm retired, but not for the reason you would want to... Also:

I have nothing against Yuri Gagarin or the annual Yuri's Night celebration of his first-ever human-crewed space flight, but Alan Shepard's equally pioneering flight (because the Soviets didn't share many engineering-relevant details of Gagarin's flight--the U.S. had to probe the risks with little external confirmation of what did and didn't work) was pushed into relative obscurity by John Glenn's orbital flight (which was hardly his fault) and, later, by a certain imported holiday that alcoholic beverage producers like to push on this day. Plus, truth be told, Alan Shepard wasn't a media celebrity back then as John Glenn was, although that changed when he played golf at Fra Mauro on the Moon ten years later, and afterward when he toured England as a shakespearean actor (Queen Elizabeth II wanted to knight him, but since he wasn't a British subject and couldn't be knighted, the office and title of Honorary Knight was created for him, and he was the first Honorary Knight of Great Britain).

[blackshire]

And have a Dos XX or a Corona....Or a screwdriver made with 150 proof Vodka (the Redstone's fuel) and orange juice. :-) (A late friend of mine, Gary Moore, worked at the Cape for Bell Telephone back then, and he and many other contractors there made cocktails using the ethyl alcohol/water Redstone fuel, which was even cleaner than the same "proofage" Vodka that was/is sold for human consumption [a lot of the German Army V-2s' fuel was similarly "diverted" from lobbing warheads to England...]. Eventually the powers that be put purple food coloring in the rocket fuel to make it look less attractive, but Gary and his fellow contractors kept on enjoying their "pilfered purple" Redstone fuel cocktails. :-) )