C Thomas remembers a space pioneer and American hero
“You care for a corned beef sandwich, skipper?” astronaut John W. Young to fellow astronaut Gus Grissom aboard Molly Brown on March 23, 1965.
On July 21, 1961 astronaut Gus Grissom became the second American in space on Liberty Bell 7. A veteran pilot of over 100 missions in the Korean War Gus became a test pilot in 1957. He eventually became one of just 7 pilots selected to be Project Mercury astronauts along with the Alan B. Shephard Jr., the first American in space, and the more popular John Glenn, who would be the first American to orbit the earth and go on to have a lengthy political career.
After Gus landed in the ocean is where his story gets interesting, while he was waiting to be recovered, there was an explosion on a hatch that caused his capsule to slowly begin sinking, thinking quickly he managed to exit the hatch and exit the module. However there were wires extruding from the module from a die pack meant to die the sea for easier aerial location and Gus got tangled up in these wires. He managed to extricate himself from these wires and swim away from the sinking module. At this moment, he realized that in the hurry to evacuate the module that an air inlet in his suit wasn’t closed and was leaking air and he was losing the buoyancy of his flight suit. He struggled furiously to stay afloat and when two choppers arrived, unaware that Gus was having issues, their rotors kicked up waves that made it even more difficult to stay afloat. Finally a third chopper threw him a lifesaving device and hoisted him to safety, not knowing how close Gus had come to sinking along with the Liberty Bell 7 to the bottom of the sea.
But today we are focusing on a conversation onboard Gus’ second trip to space aboard the Molly Brown which he named unlike his first module that sunk the Liberty Bell 7. While aboard John Young, who had smuggled a corned beef sandwich, one of Gus’ favorites, onto the module and offered Gus a bite. As they ate, little bits of rye bread floated across the cabin and the cabin began smelling of a deli. NASA, who planned every small detail, were not pleased. I share NASA’s controlling sentiment in that I took last week off, and I come back to see G Spot telling poker stories and making jokes about disabilities. I guess you can’t control every single thing. On March 23, 1965 after three successful orbits of the earth Molly Brown splashed down on a successful mission.
The Apollo program was launched to land an American on the moon. During preparations for the Apollo 1 mission there was a tragedy, not the last for the space program. On January 27, 1967, during an Apollo 1 rehearsal launch Gus Grissom died in an electrical fire accident while inside the Apollo module. Fellow astronauts Ed White and Roger B Chaffee were also killed. We don’t forget our history here at the C Thomas Printer Cooperative and we salute your bravery, service, and patriotism Mr. Grissom. That brings us to the word of the week- patriotism.
Patriotism- the quality of being patriotic; devotion to and vigorous support for one’s country
Virgil Ivan “Gus” Grissom would have been 96 years old today.
Sincerely yours,
C Thomas Printer
Carrying on the Have More Grace Challenge is this week’s challenge. In casual conversation, mention that you are fortunate to live in this country, provided that you mean it of course. However, you want to express it. We need to take something that we take for granted and verbalize it. We need to put that energy and spirit out there into the ethos because it is contagious, contagious to the good. We are very lucky to live in this country and we need to acknowledge that. Patriotism shouldn’t be exclusive to the 4th of July.
Also born on this date:
Eddie Murphy,
Washington Irving,
Cobie Smulders,
Marlon Brando,
William Wallace,
William M. Tweed,
and Doris Day.
Austerity: G Spot, did you want to add something?
G Spot: After Austerity chided me for my joke last week I decided to change my ways, I went into the pub this week and ordered a martini- stirred…
When I was a kid being an astronaut was like the coolest thing we could think of. When I used to go to bars when I came of age, I always used to tell girls that I was only available for the weekend because I had to get back to astronaut school. They couldn’t get enough of me…