Did Gus screw the pooch?

[airdvr 200]

After watching one of my all-time favorite movies it seems the question was never answered.

Please don't dent the planet.

Destinations by Roxanne

[muff528 3]

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After watching one of my all-time favorite movies it seems the question was never answered.

Ol' Gus,..he did alright!

Nothing but a lot of admiration and respect for ALL those guys. They were (still are) my heroes way back then. ......true pioneers!

[topdocker 0]

One of my all-time favorites as well!

The book is way better of course. Along with "Yeager."

I think by the time those guys got to that stage in the game, their shit was wired pretty tight. I just couldn't see one of them panicking and going for the hatch early.

At least they recovered the capsule! (recently)

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Jump more, post less!

[Andy9o8 0]

I don't think he panicked (or mis-judged) and deliberately blew it early. He may have activated it unintentionally, though, without believing that he did. Anyhow, they gave Gus mission command in the first Gemini mission and what would have been the first Apollo mission (had there not been the Apollo 1 fire). That's vindication enough.

[kkeenan 13]

It's certainly possible, but if he did, it is extremely doubtful that he would have later been given command of the first Gemini and later the first Apollo missions. The folks who gave him those assignments had all of the facts, so if there had been any question about it, I'm sure they would have picked someone else.

Kevin K.

_____________________________________
Dude, you are so awesome...
Can I be on your ash jump ?

[Amazon 7]

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After watching one of my all-time favorite movies it seems the question was never answered.

Nope, I really believe he did not do anything wrong. Electrical stuff going into a salt water environment does some totally screwed up shit, as anyone who has dealt with a marine environment will tell you.

[airdvr 200]

I'm inclined to believe that he did. I'm always struck by how small the original Mercury capsule was.

http://www.smart-nar.org/photos/albums/userpics/Mercury_Spacecraft.png

I'm betting claustrophobia could set in fairly quickly.

Please don't dent the planet.

Destinations by Roxanne

[Niki1 1]

I think I read some years ago (10 maybe?) that the door had been found by a deep sea submersable doing something else. There was evidence that it had gone off without activation.

I was never sure but gave him the benifit of the doubt because of what Kevin said.

Most of the things worth doing in the world had been declared impossilbe before they were done.
Louis D Brandeis

Where are we going and why are we in this basket?

[Amazon 7]

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I'm inclined to believe that he did. I'm always struck by how small the original Mercury capsule was.

http://www.smart-nar.org/photos/albums/userpics/Mercury_Spacecraft.png

I'm betting claustrophobia could set in fairly quickly.

The problem with that, is very simple. Those guys damn near lived in those capsules for a hell of a lot of hours before ever getting to fly one. Lets also not forget these were HIGHLY trained test pilots and if you have EVER seen the cockpits of the early fighters that they were used to flying, you do not so much as sit in those.. you WEAR the damn things. Most of them had THOUSANDS of hours of experience before they were ever selected for the Mercury program.

[skyrider 0]

OK, gues I'll have to admit to being Ignorant, what does, "Screw the pooch"? mean?

[monkycndo 0]

Screw the pooch= make a mistake

50 donations so far. Give it a try.

You know you want to spank it
Jump an Infinity

[Amazon 7]

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OK, gues I'll have to admit to being Ignorant, what does, "Screw the pooch"? mean?

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/screw_the_pooch

Synonyms

crash and burn
fuck up
drop the ball

Retrieved from "http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/screw_the_pooch"

[quade 3]

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After watching one of my all-time favorite movies it seems the question was never answered.

The man was an Astronaut, not a boat skipper. What happened after the spacecraft "landed" back on earth is irrelevant.

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

[skyrider 0]

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Screw the pooch= make a mistake

Thanks, Never heard the term before...Doubt I will ever again!

[FlyingJ 0]

That's one thing that always frustrated me about that movie. Love the movie, but for so many people that is all that they will ever know of that time frame of space exploration. I hate that such a large group of people would only ever associate Grissom as the dude that "screwed the pooch" according to a hollywood movie rather than for the amazing guy he was.

Killing threads since 2004.

[JohnMitchell 14]

That pooch was unscrewable. (From the book.)

[muff528 3]

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That pooch was unscrewable. (From the book.)

.....and from the film: "Sometimes you get a pooch that can't be screwed." I forget who said that in the movie. I guess the quote referred to the "fact" that these guys could do no wrong in the eyes of the adoring public.

[wolfriverjoe 1,351]

The final official report was inconclusive. They couldn't make it "just blow" despite repeated tests.

But (and this is why I believe he did nothing wrong), the button to blow the hatch had to be hit hard enough to leave a distinctive bruise on the astronaut's hand. Grissom's hand had no such bruise.

The Mercury astronaut who really screwed the pooch was Scott Carpenter. He was so enthralled by being in orbit that he neglected to do several important tasks (like aligning the gyro platform). He also was so interested in looking at stuff that he burned up almost all of his manuvering fuel, and barely had enough for reentry. He never flew again.

Read "Flight" by Chris Kraft for the story.

"There are NO situations which do not call for a French Maid outfit." Lucky McSwervy

"~ya don't GET old by being weak & stupid!" - Airtwardo

[Guest]

Yeah, but Fred Ward and Veronica Cartwright did a fantastic scene (Gus and Betty arguing in the hotel room). Best scene in the film, IMO.

mh
.

"The mouse does not know life until it is in the mouth of the cat."

[NickDG 23]

One day in the mid-nineties I had the day off at the Cal-City DZ so I loaded up some beer and chow into my truck and drove about 20 miles out into the desert just to be alone. There's not much to do in Cal City if you're not jumping and I did these trips often. I usually told people at the DZ I was off to go meteor hunting and that was somewhat true. But my technique never bared fruit. I'd usually just set up a chair and my beer cooler, roll a fatty, and wait for one to fall.

So once again I set up out there just enjoying the vastness, solitude, and beauty of that place with no students and no reserves to repack when this F-16 came ripping over my head at about 500-feet. I knew who it was instantly. It was the day before my birthday (the 14th of October) and I knew Chuck Yeager would be celebrating the 40th anniversary of his breaking the sound barrier the very next day at close by Edwards' AFB. He was scheduled to do a flight demonstration and re-break the sound barrier. It was all over the news for days.

So for the next hour or so it was just me and old Chuck out there in the desert alone while he flew a practice filght. My own private airshow! There's not much in this part of the scrub desert so I'm sure he saw my truck out there. But I was positive of it when he flew over my head one last time and I stood up to wave. Then he did something I'll never forget. General Chuck Yeager gave me a wing wag!

What a birthday present . . .

NickD

[usedtajump 1]

There was a documentary on The History Channel or one of those type channels, about the recovery of the Liberty Bell capsule. After the recovery, the investigation as to the position of the activation device that "blows the hatch" showed that it was in the correct position with the seal still in place indicating that "the hatch just blew". Guess old Gus was a canine virgin after all.

The older I get the less I care who I piss off.

[Squeak 17]

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One day in the mid-nineties I had the day off at the Cal-City DZ so I loaded up some beer and chow into my truck and drove about 20 miles out into the desert just to be alone. There's not much to do in Cal City if you're not jumping and I did these trips often. I usually told people at the DZ I was off to go meteor hunting and that was somewhat true. But my technique never bared fruit. I'd usually just set up a chair and my beer cooler, roll a fatty, and wait for one to fall.

So once again I set up out there just enjoying the vastness, solitude, and beauty of that place with no students and no reserves to repack when this F-16 came ripping over my head at about 500-feet. I knew who it was instantly. It was the day before my birthday (the 14th of October) and I knew Chuck Yeager would be celebrating the 40th anniversary of his breaking the sound barrier the very next day at close by Edwards' AFB. He was scheduled to do a flight demonstration and re-break the sound barrier. It was all over the news for days.

So for the next hour or so it was just me and old Chuck out there in the desert alone while he flew a practice filght. My own private airshow! There's not much in this part of the scrub desert so I'm sure he saw my truck out there. But I was positive of it when he flew over my head one last time and I stood up to wave. Then he did something I'll never forget. General Chuck Yeager gave me a wing wag!

What a birthday present . . .

NickD

THAT is VERY COOL

You are not now, nor will you ever be, good enough to not die in this sport (Sparky)
My Life ROCKS!
How's yours doing?

[ryoder 1,398]

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So once again I set up out there just enjoying the vastness, solitude, and beauty of that place with no students and no reserves to repack when this F-16 came ripping over my head at about 500-feet.

Back in the early-to-mid '80's I was driving out across the CA desert one summer day in my Plymouth Horizon TC3.
Now this thing had the most undersized radiator I'd ever seen, (about the size of a Sears-Roebuck catalog), so the only way to maintain normal highway cruising speed in those temperatures was to run the heater full blast, which of course meant having all the windows wide open.

So I'm cruising alone across the desert miles from anywhere when...

[KABOOM!!!!]

Scared the bejeezus out of me, and I damned near ran off the road.
I managed to spin my head around to the left to see the tail end of a fighter about 30' off the deck disappearing into the horizon.
He had buzzed me at a right angle to my direction of travel, and I never saw him coming.

"There are only three things of value: younger women, faster airplanes, and bigger crocodiles" - Arthur Jones.

[lawrocket 3]

Had Gus screwed the pooch he wouldn't have been selected to command Gemini I AND Apollo I,
Gus was the engineer. He brought that perspective to the group. Whether he screwed the pooch or not, Gus participated in a lot, and "It's Gus's ass riding on top of that thing. So do good work."

It's funny - I'm reading Cernan's book right now. Fun stuff. I still think John Young and Hoot Gibson are a couple of the coolest mofo's ever to walk the earth and beyond...

My wife is hotter than your wife.

[CDRINF 1]

All of the astronauts who blew the hatch manually got a bad bruise from the detonator switch recoil that cut through their pressure suit glove. Gus did not get one. He had removed the safety pin from the detonator switch, however, and the spacecraft was sloshing around in the water a lot. He was juggling a helmet, clipboard, and marking pen at the time and may have banged the switch by mistake with the helmet. He acknowledged this possibility to Deke Slayton, the Chief Astronaut, after the flight.

CDR