Got back from our Disney Cruise last week. Was hoping to see the Discovery launch on our embarkation day (July 1), but unfortunately, it was delayed due to weather.
After we got back, we had some time to kill before our flight home, so we went over to the Kennedy Space Center. It was very interesting, and we got to see many aspects of the Space Program, including the Shuttles, the Internation Space Station, and the Apollo series.
One of the most interesting exhibits is the Liberty Bell 7. This was the module that Virgil I. "Gus" Grissom piloted, in the second US manned mission into space. The new hatch device malfunctioned after splashdown, and the module flooded, nearly drowning Grissom. The recovery helicopter could not lift the water-logged spacecraft, and it lay at the bottom of the ocean for 30 years. In 1999, a dive team located and recovered the space ship, and it is on display at Kennedy until September 10, after which time it will be moved to the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center for permanent display.
Here are some links:
http://www.kennedyspacecenter.com/LibertyBell_Spacecraft/index.asp
http://www.mikedunn.com/lb7.html
The movie "The Right Stuff" INaccurately depicted Grissom as panicking and deliberately releasing the hatch prematurely, thereby losing the spacecraft. Without exception, everyone at NASA/KSC states that this is totally untrue; that Grissom perfomed in an exemplary fashion, and, had he not tragically died in the cabin fire in the last test run of what was to be Apollo 1, HE, not Neil Armstrong, was on schedule to be the first man on the moon.
I am a native of Indiana, and a graduate of Purdue University, and I've always known about Gus Grissom, as a small-town Indiana boy who did well in the famed NASA space program of the 1960's. It is nice to know that he was NOT the incompetent braggart that was portrayed in the movie.
After we got back, we had some time to kill before our flight home, so we went over to the Kennedy Space Center. It was very interesting, and we got to see many aspects of the Space Program, including the Shuttles, the Internation Space Station, and the Apollo series.
One of the most interesting exhibits is the Liberty Bell 7. This was the module that Virgil I. "Gus" Grissom piloted, in the second US manned mission into space. The new hatch device malfunctioned after splashdown, and the module flooded, nearly drowning Grissom. The recovery helicopter could not lift the water-logged spacecraft, and it lay at the bottom of the ocean for 30 years. In 1999, a dive team located and recovered the space ship, and it is on display at Kennedy until September 10, after which time it will be moved to the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center for permanent display.
Here are some links:
http://www.kennedyspacecenter.com/LibertyBell_Spacecraft/index.asp
http://www.mikedunn.com/lb7.html
The movie "The Right Stuff" INaccurately depicted Grissom as panicking and deliberately releasing the hatch prematurely, thereby losing the spacecraft. Without exception, everyone at NASA/KSC states that this is totally untrue; that Grissom perfomed in an exemplary fashion, and, had he not tragically died in the cabin fire in the last test run of what was to be Apollo 1, HE, not Neil Armstrong, was on schedule to be the first man on the moon.
I am a native of Indiana, and a graduate of Purdue University, and I've always known about Gus Grissom, as a small-town Indiana boy who did well in the famed NASA space program of the 1960's. It is nice to know that he was NOT the incompetent braggart that was portrayed in the movie.
