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Post by echnaton on Nov 27, 2006 10:37:20 GMT -4
In Cernan’s book Last Man On The Moon, he describes the disbelief on Slayton’s face when he declined to take a mission as LMP. It was the second decline of an offer to walk on the moon that Slayton had received and Slayton really had a hard time with it.
Cernan almost lost his seat on A17 because of two accidents. The first was hurting his led in a softball game while sliding into a base. The flight surgeon took a risk to certify him for the flight because he was not completely healed.
The second was when he crashed a helicopter into the Indian River. While flying close to the surface one of his skids dipped into the water and he could not pull it up. The copter crashed and the fuel tank ruptured. Cernan surfaced into the fire then had to swim underwater while injured to get away from the fuel. Because the news was released on a weekend the newspapers never picked it up. If it had, Cernan said, he likely would have been replaced.
He is a very fortunate guy.
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Post by Kiwi on Nov 28, 2006 23:06:50 GMT -4
He is a very fortunate guy. He is also one of my favourites to listen to and I'd like to read his book some day. These are some of the stories that make Apollo so fascinating. I feel sorry for the HBs who can't see past their narrow minds and enjoy the facts of one of the greatest stories in the history of the planet. More from "For All Mankind": Al Reinert — The technology was primitive0:58:14 Al Reinert: It really does show the power of a dream and willpower and courage, because the technology that you did it with is so primitive compared to what you have available today. 0:58:25 0:58:25 Gene Cernan: And yet that technology today doesn't take us anywhere. We didn't just go to the moon on the basis of technology alone. Like I said it was perhaps the greatest human endeavour. We went on... It was the spirit, it was the challenge, it was the commitment which took us to the moon. 0:58:39 ######## Gene Cernan — We're not exploring space1:18:41 Gene Cernan: Here we're only 25-30 years after those steps on the moon, and we're beginning to better understand. People are getting more excited and more interested. "Why did we quit? Why didn't we go on? When are we going back?" These are the questions I hear today. The sad part about it is that here we find ourselves at the turn into the 21st century, the millennium, and we no longer are exploring space. We had the greatest start in the world up the ladder to the moon. We're exploiting space, yes, but we're not exploring space, which is going to come back to haunt us, as a space-faring nation, if we don't decide that learning something about that great unknown that surrounds us is as important as the commercial or scientific values that can make our life better here on earth. 1:19:30 Gene Cernan — There's a young kid out there...1:19:30 Gene Cernan: I know there's a young kid out there with the courage and the willpower to take us back up there, where we belong, to explore, and maybe that's the responsibility I had to be the disciple, to encourage other people to pick up from where I left off. I wanted to put a footnote on my book, saying, "The Last Man on the Moon — For Now." 1:19:50
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