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Post by Jason Thompson on May 26, 2011 13:28:38 GMT -4
Not a popular opinion, but I think he is a little full of himself. I think it's an opinion he shares, or at least is aware of. In a recent interview (I can't recall if it was the Discovery Channel series When We Left Earth or In the Shadow of the Moon) he says: 'To do what we do, you had to be a little bit arrogant', and goes on to describe the common feeling among all fighter pilots (and hence all astronauts of the period) that they were not only good but the best at everything they did. So maybe he is full of himself, but he knows it, and it's not like his accomplishments don't go any way towards justifying that, really.
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Post by laurel on May 26, 2011 16:10:33 GMT -4
This is something Cernan said in the ALSJ that I think is relevant. Most people who want to fly big-time or fly off aircraft carriers, if they're not a little arrogant and don't think they're the best pilot in the world, they should get in some other business ... To be a great pilot, you've got to think you can do it better than it had ever been done before. You know your limitations, but you have to be a little arrogant. I used to say, 'I dare the guidance system on the Apollo Saturn V to fail, because I can get us into orbit.' And if I didn't think I could get us into orbit, then I shouldn't have been there. And I knew I could land that lunar module closer than anybody else had done to their desired landing point. Whether I'm a few feet long or short, really didn't matter, but I had to go into that mission thinking that. It's the kind of arrogance - not egotism - that you have to have. www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a17/a17.prepdi.html
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Post by echnaton on May 26, 2011 19:54:41 GMT -4
'I dare the guidance system on the Apollo Saturn V to fail, because I can get us into orbit.'
Now that would have been fun to fly. All that power at your fingertips, something that had never been done before and nothing much in the way of visual clues to guide you. I bet Cernan would have tried it.
Another thing in his commentary I found interesting was the contrast between him and Schmitt about the LM. While on EVA Schmidt was more than happy to leave the monitoring of the LM to the ground crew. OTOH, Cernan would periodically check with Houston about the state of the LM. He said that a pilot always need to know the state of his craft.
Being the guy he is, he probably could have handled most failures with the LM as well as anyone. Whereas Schmitt the geologist probably couldn't have done much on his own but rightly should be focusing on his mission of science. Cernan's commentary on Schmitt's performance during the mission was friendly but it was noticeably from a pilot perspective writing about a non-pilot.
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Post by banjomd on May 27, 2011 7:44:17 GMT -4
This is something Cernan said in the ALSJ that I think is relevant. Most people who want to fly big-time or fly off aircraft carriers, if they're not a little arrogant and don't think they're the best pilot in the world, they should get in some other business ... To be a great pilot, you've got to think you can do it better than it had ever been done before. You know your limitations, but you have to be a little arrogant. I used to say, 'I dare the guidance system on the Apollo Saturn V to fail, because I can get us into orbit.' And if I didn't think I could get us into orbit, then I shouldn't have been there. And I knew I could land that lunar module closer than anybody else had done to their desired landing point. Whether I'm a few feet long or short, really didn't matter, but I had to go into that mission thinking that. It's the kind of arrogance - not egotism - that you have to have. www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a17/a17.prepdi.htmlConrad said he would precision-land near Surveyor III and did it! Shepard implied that a lunar landing without landing RADAR would be easier than a night carrier landing with swelling seas!
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Post by ka9q on May 27, 2011 8:16:41 GMT -4
And Schmitt, for his part, maintained that it was much easier for a trained scientist to learn how to be a pilot than it was for a trained pilot to become a scientist...
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Post by banjomd on May 27, 2011 8:27:55 GMT -4
Sure, you can train almost anyone to fly but a seat-of-the-pants hot shot pilot is a special person. There's a great anecdote by Joe Allen about Deke Slayton in the book "Deke". Highly entertaining!
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Post by Glom on May 28, 2011 5:16:35 GMT -4
Not a popular opinion, but I think he is a little full of himself. Then again, so is Chuck Yeager and I consider both to be American heroes. He certainly came across that way in the beginning. He got rapidly humbled being in the company of giants I think what made Collins' book so successful was how modest he was throughout. He is able to portray his character more as an every-man, which makes the book feel a lot more accessible.
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Post by Data Cable on May 29, 2011 20:03:43 GMT -4
How many fighter pilots does it take to change a light bulb? One - he just holds the bulb and the world revolves around him. Rotates. If the world revolved around him, it would be orbiting him, and that action isn't very useful for manipulating threaded fasteners.
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Post by Glom on Jun 2, 2011 19:24:18 GMT -4
"Ok, Al, you win. It's your flight."
ROTFLMAO
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Post by Obviousman on Jun 3, 2011 0:06:47 GMT -4
Pedant! How many fighter pilots does it take to change a light bulb? One - he just holds the bulb and the world revolves around him. Rotates. If the world revolved around him, it would be orbiting him, and that action isn't very useful for manipulating threaded fasteners.
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Post by Data Cable on Jun 3, 2011 1:09:15 GMT -4
Pedant! Guilty.
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Post by Glom on Jun 7, 2011 18:14:13 GMT -4
And it's done. He did quite a good job of conveying the poignancy of having the last flight. The absence of Guenter Vendt being an example.
There was a great sense of adventure about the lunar surface stay though it did feel too brief perhaps. It was good to get some story telling of an actual moon walker.
Very good though I think Collins still sits on top.
The standout bit though was his telling of Barbara's story. It was a double edged sword in terms of narrative structure, but telling the story does set it apart from the other books I've read. He almost seemed to be atoning for the way he allowed the marriage to decay by covering it with such dedication. I could feel the tension building as the story went on. Wasn't much of an epilogue though. He mentioned the divorce and then that was that. I'd have liked to have known how Barbara moved on.
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Post by Count Zero on Jun 8, 2011 9:24:27 GMT -4
Yes, that really covered ground that a lot of astronaut bios gloss over. Those passages were very human.
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