Mattingly: flew to the moon with typhoid Mary

Ken Mattingly was a member of the prime crew for Apollo 13. But, he was removed from the crew just days before the flight.

It turns out, astronaut Charles Duke, who was on the backup crew, had caught measles and accidentally exposed the prime crew to the disease. Mattingly was the only member of the prime crew who never had measles. So, only he lost his seat—which would have been Mattingly’s first space flight. Ironically, Ken never contracted the measles.

But losing the flight was a very big disappointment. Of course, he missed being on the most terrifying Apollo mission—but he was scheduled for a later flight.

And so it came to pass that Ken Mattingly would go to the moon aboard Apollo 16, and would have sitting next to him…Charles Duke.

When Duke boarded the spacecraft, he found a sticker put on his chair by Mattingly. It said “thyphoid Mary’s seat”. Duke rode with the sticker all the way to the moon.

Note: A few years back, that sticker came up at an auction; I really wanted it because the story behind it is one of my favorites…but it went for too a high a price.

McCall put his "stamp" on the moon.

Although Robert McCall never got to space himself (something he passionately hoped to do), some of his artwork did make it there. Stamps he designed were canceled on the lunar surface by the Apollo 15 crew.

McCall died February 26. He was 90.

His artwork will always be a part of our popular space culture. In addition to designing a number of postage stamps, his artwork appeared on the poster for the movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey. (That big “wheel” space station: his! But similar to many from earlier visions, including von Braun’s space station in Colliers in the 1950…illustrated by Chesley Bonestell.)

In the 1980’s, McCall applied to become a NASA space traveler when the space agency was planning to send up civilians. But that program was canceled when Christa McAuliff was killed in the Challenger explosion.

Still, McCall did get to ride the open cage elevator to the Faith 7 Mercury spacecraft with astronaut Gordon Cooper. Pretty darn cool, if you can’t actually go into space.

China's ambitious space plans: Why not a space station AND the moon?

The first module of China’s space station is scheduled for launch next year.

The station will be called “Heavenly Palace”. The initial module (called Mandarin) will form a core into which future modules will be docked.

Mandarin is pretty big. It’s 30 feet long and weighs in at 8.5 tons. (okay, in space it’s weightless…) Still, it’s a lot smaller than Skylab, which was 84 feet long. On the other hand, Mandarin is only one module of what will be a bigger space station.

One analyst says the planned launch of the space station demonstrates that China’s lunar program has been back-burnered. I disagree. The analyst presumes that China can’t or won’t advance two major space projects at the same time.

But, unlike the U.S., China’s economy is strong and China has shown strong support for manned flight. I think the Chines are planning to still do both the station and (ultimately) a manned lunar flight.

Chef (and astronaut) Soichi shows culinary skills aboard the ISS.

Okay. Not much to say except: a Japanese astronaut broadcast his preparation of sushi aboard the International Space Station. (Salmon! My favorite!)

India: designing, building and flying manned spacecraft; the U.S. won't.

While the United States puts on the brakes, and hands over the responsibility for manned spaceflight to private companies, India is accelerating its pace.

A budgetary increase (by 35%) is advancing ISRO’s (Indian Space Research Organisation) plan to send two Indian astronauts into orbit for that country’s first manned space mission. India is also planning to send two robotic rovers onto the lunar surface, presumably an advance team for an eventual Indian manned landing.

I find it ironic that India’s space program uses the word “research” in its name but is actually going places. And that NASA, which has always been known for going places, is being reduced to research.

Aldrin: Let's stop and do some research.

Words cannot express how much I admire Buzz Aldrin. But…

He seems to think that America faced a choice of going to the moon or going to Mars, and wisely chose the latter. NASA’s new  course in space is allegedly to spend time and money doing research and finding the best way to send people to Mars.

Chemical rockets are slow, and have other shortcomings. There must be a better way—according to Aldrin and others. We will find that better way.

And maybe we will. But Buzz misses a key point. The choice isn’t whether we send people to the moon or to Mars.

It’s whether or not we send people anywhere. Because, once NASA stops building rockets and sending people into space, it’ll be difficult—maybe impossible—to ever get funding for it again. We’re giving up actually sending people into space and have decided to just research—theoretically—the best way to do it.

Aldrin is always saying about the moon: been there, done that. Well, he’s been there, but not too many others. And nobody’s been there since 1972 and nobody’s capable of getting there today.

I don’t think it’s about the destination. Either we’re sending people beyond earth orbit, or we’re not. Looks like we’re not.

Dyson training.

Esther Dyson, a wealthy technology entrepreneur, book a flight on a Soyuz sometime back. We wrote about it here. She trained for six months, but never flew. (Yet.)

She’s still hoping to fly—seats are getting scarce for paid space travelers aboard Soyuz—and it’s pricey even for successful businesspeople like Ms. Dyson.

That said, she had a very interesting experience, going through cosmonaut training. She shares her experience with us now in Fortune Magazine. Even better, read her blog about it.

Will a descendent of this Chinese rocket put an astronaut on the moon in 2021?

I find myself imagining this:

It’s September 2021. The world is watching as a Taikonaut—a Chinese astronaut—steps onto the lunar surface. It’s an incredible view, which I watch on my high-definition video glasses. I see it in real time, except for the 2 1/2 second delay to get the signal from the moon.

The Chinese lander is on the Sea of Tranquility which—aside for the boulder field Neil Armstrong jumped over to land the Eagle in 1969—is a pretty good place to first land on the moon. In the background is the original Apollo 11 site, with everything looking as it did nearly 60 years earlier.

The Americans can’t deny the accomplishment and praise the landing. They also downplay it somewhat as a stunt. And they note that NASA has sent some pretty impressive robots to the surface of several of Jupiter’s moons in recent years.

But there’s no denying that America in space isn’t what it once was. Earlier in 2021, India sent a pair of its astronauts around the moon in a free-return trajectory. Meanwhile, America continues in earth orbit, on rented spacecraft.

Back in 2017, one of the private American spacecraft failed with several tourists aboard. Now, even stricter safety standards were in place. The result: very few American flights, and those flights are dominated by safety procedures. This is similar to how we’ve been running the last of the shuttle flights—the key activity of the shuttle is to inspect itself and make sure the protective tiles are secure.

I don’t know if the American public will be upset when the Chinese land. Or whether they’ll wonder why we just gave up on leaving earth orbit. Maybe they just won’t care. That will say something about America and Americans.

Elon Musk: Real life "Iron Man" profiled in The New York Times

There’s a great profile of Elon Musk and his impressive company, SpaceX, in the New York Times. And, although SpaceX’s biggest accomplishment so far is, arguably, winning a huge contract to send supplies to the International Space Station…that wasn’t his main goal.

SpaceX is really about sending humans into space. The exact quote: “Really, the whole purpose of SpaceX from the beginning has been human spaceflight.”

Musk and his company has some serious competition, but someone will (presumably) win NASA’s approval now that the country will no longer have a manned spacecraft.

One interesting fact in the Times article: In the Iron Man movie, the title character Tony Stark, was based in part on Elon Musk. And Musk himself and SpaceX appear in the sequel.

Nonetheless, that’s the way it is. Now that the private space companies will be the primary source of launching NASA astronauts, they get the spotlight. And possibly the heat…if things go wrong.

Regarding astronaut reactions:

Buzz Aldrin is thrilled that America has chosen “to redirect our nation’s space policy away from the foolish and underfunded Moon race that has consumed NASA for more than six years, aiming instead at boosting the agency’s budget by more than $1 billion more per year over the next five years, topping off at $100 billion for NASA between now and 2015.”

Walt Cunningham, who flew the first manned Apollo mission is not happy. He says canceling Constellation will “accelerate America’s downward spiral toward mediocrity in space exploration.”

Retired shuttle astronaut Tom Jones doesn’t like it, and says that the cancellation indicates “human spaceflight is unimportant to U.S. national interests.”