Re: [PSUBS-MAILIST] FWD: CNN Breaking News/OT

[Coalbunny <coalbunny@vcn.com>]

Right on!  
Carl


Alec Smyth wrote:
> 
> Just some trivia here. Guess who enclosed John Glenn's capsule in acrylic at the Smithsonian? Greg Cottrell, the same guy who has made some of our psubs windows.
> 
> Alec
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: William Alford [mailto:walford@dbtech.net]
> Sent: Monday, February 03, 2003 10:11 AM
> To: personal_submersibles@psubs.org; personal_submersibles@psubs.org
> Subject: Re: [PSUBS-MAILIST] FWD: CNN Breaking News/OT
> 
> At 02:21 PM 2/2/2003 -0500, Michael B Holt wrote:
> >On Sun, 2 Feb 2003 15:23:09 +0100 "Peter Madsen" writes:
> 
> >>... I would feal a lot more safe in a Mercury capsule
> >Have you ever looked at the design of the interior of the space capsules?
> 
> I have actually sat in the very seat that John Glenn sat in during his
> historic flight. I would *not* feel very safe falling from the heavens in it!
> 
> I visited the Huntsville, Alabama Space Museum way back in the late 70's
> before the capsule was moved from there to the Smithsonian. Back then the
> capsule just sat open on a platform in the middle of the floor and gangs of
> schoolchildren would climb through it and play on it. I couldn't resist
> experiencing what one of my heros did and climbed in myself. It was
> incredibly *tiny* (really "spam in a can" as the Mercury astronauts said)
> and the seat was just a steel sheet, no padding at all on back or seat.
> Clunky switches and small windows. The capsule wall was remarkably thin to
> be able protect from the vacuum and radiation of space and the heat of
> re-entry. Remember that during Glenn's flight, the heat shields began to
> burn away and mission control thought he would be lost. He knew the
> situation and yet during the re-entry ordeal the telemetry showed that his
> heart rate increased by only 1 beat. Truly "the Right Stuff"! Now all the
> stuff in the Huntsville museum and Smithsonian are in plexiglas cages for
> protection-- can look but don't touch. I treasure the memory of sitting in
> the seat and fiddling with the switches.
> 
> BTW the first American in space was in residence at the museam back then--
> the monkey who was shot into space before the astronauts. By some
> circumstance he lived to about 28 (? something like that), about twice
> normal lifespan. He was in a cage in the same room as the Glenn capsule.
> 
> William Alford
> walford@dbtech.net
> 
> Tout comprendre c'est tout pardonner

-- 
"You delight not in a city's seven or seventy wonders, but in an answer
it gives to a question of yours, or the question it asks you, forcing
you to answer, like Thebes through the mouth of the Sphinx." -- Kublai
Khan