The Right Stuff

[Hans Tucker (Hans)]

And no .. this thread is not a tribute to the annoying song by New Kids On The Block ... although a good actor did emerge from the band.

Did you like the 1984 Movie ... The Right Stuff ... with Bill Conti's excellent music score. Well now they have produced a series

https://youtu.be/Og0htvEVqJQ

Enjoy

[Tulloch (Andrew)]

The book is excellent - if you can find a copy it's well worth a read.

[Sunfish (Ray)]

The film was fun but I agree the book was a sensational bit of doco journalism .The subjects come up in a lot of space movies about that era. Who knew then?

I will have to check the series and the soundtrack.

[Startrek (Martin)]

After touring through Canada in mid 2018 ( retirement gift from the misses ) we spent 3 days down in Florida at the Kennedy Space Centre ( the wife was bored out of her brain ).After visiting all the Apollo exhibitions, on the last day we did a 4 hour round trip out to the Cape Canaveral Airforce Base and visited the old Mercury launch complex , Firing room and museum ( so strange as this area is only 4km from the KSC but off limits to civilians so we had to have security checks in place before we could enter the base )
Most of the original Mercury Redstone infrastructure is still there ( excluding launch tower ) but they have erected a full size mock up Redstone rocket with Mercury capsule anchored to the original launch pad , block house and firing room still there , concrete blast screens , cable trenches with all the old armoured cables still intact with checker plate lids , old signage etc... a real blast from the past pardon the pun
Firing room is definitely late 50s early 60s technology, spring loaded Bakelite push buttons , electromechanical relays , old gauges etc... and an original sign on the firing button with arrow
Only the chimps , Shepard and Grissom were launched from this pad LC5 , the Atlas orbital launches with Glenn and others were launched about a km away up the coast at LC14
A most enjoyable trip
I’ve read the book “ The Right Stuff” and enjoyed every page, a great author Tom Wolfe , the old movie in my opinion was a let down, typical Hollywood beat up drama just like “First man” last year
Looking forward to watching this latest series of the right stuff , hopefully they will get it right !!!
Thanks for posting !!

[Startrek (Martin)]

After touring through Canada in mid 2018 ( retirement gift from the misses ) we spent 3 days down in Florida at the Kennedy Space Centre ( the wife was bored out of her brain ).After visiting all the Apollo exhibitions, on the last day we did a 4 hour round trip out to the Cape Canaveral Airforce Base and visited the old Mercury launch complex , Firing room and museum ( so strange as this area is only 4km from the KSC but off limits to civilians so we had to have security checks in place before we could enter the base )
Most of the original Mercury Redstone infrastructure is still there ( excluding launch tower ) but they have erected a full size mock up Redstone rocket with Mercury capsule anchored to the original launch pad , block house and firing room still there , concrete blast screens , cable trenches with all the old armoured cables still intact with checker plate lids , old signage etc... a real blast from the past pardon the pun
Firing room is definitely late 50s early 60s technology, spring loaded Bakelite push buttons , electromechanical relays , old gauges etc... and an original sign on the firing button with arrow
Only the chimps , Shepard and Grissom were launched from this pad LC5 , the Atlas orbital launches with Glenn and others were launched about a km away up the coast at LC14
A most enjoyable trip
I’ve read the book “ The Right Stuff” and enjoyed every page, a great author Tom Wolfe , the old movie was a let down

[Andy01 (Andy)]

Hey Martin,
Looks like we did the same tour at KSC - it's well worth it!
Here are some images of the highlights you mentioned.
- Mercury control room
- Mercury Rocket
- Apollo 1 Memorial
- Rocket Garden
- Hall of Heroes
..... and an image of the reason I was there - to document a couple of launches, one from Space-X and this one (pictured) being the Atlas V Boeing Starliner uncrewed capsule test.

Rocket launches are cool

[Startrek (Martin)]

Andy
I hope the day you visited was a comfortable temperature, we toured in July and the temperature out on the Mercury launch pad was 40 degrees with 80% humidity. It was that hot my wife had to stand in the shadow of the Redstone whilst the tour guide rambled on forever ( why he couldn’t do a commentary in the air conditioned bus then let us out to walk around for 10 minutes I’ll never know , strictly to the routine irrespective of the unbearable weather.
Great experience though and my hats off to those Mercury astronauts, wow they really were made of the right stuff, true Space pioneers
Thanks for sharing