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Ahh.
Those were the days.
Pure entertainment.
I hope no permanent harm came to Johnny as a result of this allegation.
Skookum strikes again.
Bring back Bronco Nagurski.

Obama doesn’t have a clue what the space race did to motivate my generation. When I was in grade school in ’57, NASA came to our science class with a dewar of LN2 and dazzled our young minds by freezing bananas and roses. The NASA guy told us if we studied hard at math and science, we could be part of the space program. It was true.

We listened, we studied, and some of us became part of all that. Forty years later, I was honored to sit up front at KSC and launch a few Space Shuttles.

My generation actually built things and accomplished things. Obama never built a damn thing and his only “accomplishment” is putting America on the road to destruction.

Well I helped to launch the Challenger from the C-9 console (instrumentation) on that fateful (and freezing cold) day in January ’86. There were good days and bad days…

No man can understand the commitment made to the United States of America like those of us who have sat in contemplation of our own mortality in a situation where our contribution would account the cost of millions of lives. In 1973, Yom Kippur, we sat in the North Sea on Battle Stations Missle . . . not a drill. During those hours of high status the principal topic of conversation was “wheather or not” each of us, as an individual, could ACTUALLY contribute to the launch of a nuclear weapon toward our arch enemy the USSR. We all knew full well that the firing of any missle would in return result in our own demise . . . yet by far most agreed that it was necessary to do what we had all been so efficiently trained to do. We would carryout the job . . . without consideration of even our own lives. Note that on return from that patrol . . . there were individuals that were reclassified as conscientious objector status and removed from submarine duty, I believe they were all democrats!!! LOL

Sad that our political leaders of today fail to recognize that through the efforts of a few inept we are sacrificing the lifestyle that some of us were so willing to die for. We the few feel the on-coming loss at a depth of soul few others can share.

Skookum, you have a way with the written word my friend. I truly enjoy your writings and this latest one is no exception.

You have a way of writing that makes the reader care about what is happening to the characters in your stories.

Keep it up, my friend.

Update: I did not get my Christmas story on iTunes in time for the holidays due to the fact that I had no cover art. The cover I submitted for the FA posting was one I put together from various pics on the web. But I needed a cover that would not get me in hot water with someone down the road. I will be soon up and running at iTunes, though.

Great piece. I remember those glory days of Mid South Wrestling in north Louisiana. Sputnik played the villian but it’s obvious he was a good guy. Mr. O on the other hand is playing the good guy…

Skook,
Nothing can bring a smile to my face quicker than your old racetrack stories. so many people that I knew.combine that with the transition to this mess of a President and as always, great writing and you have the formula my friend!

James Poulos says this isn’t a Sputnik moment, but rather Our Stalingrad Moment:

From the vantage of the young, for the President — and, indeed, virtually the entire leadership class of the United States of America — this is their Stalingrad moment: the moment at which the vast armies they continue to maneuver around the gigantic battle map turn out to be gone, destroyed, never to return again. The bold challenges, the arbitrary and random numerical goalposts (80% more of these, 100,000 more of those) — it all gave off the disconnected feel of denial-driven fantasy. It’s not that the emperor has no clothes. It’s that he has no divisions.

Young Americans already face a future defined by an inescapable reckoning. They already tend to look at our grand entitlements as phantoms, as dead entitlements walking. They already know the problem isn’t that we have too few college graduates, but that we — like Tunisia and (gasp!) China, to mention a few — have too many for the market to absorb. And they already know that all the science and math in the world can’t serve to nourish our personal and cultural convictions about the purpose and character of American life in transformed times.

I don’t think there’s a much worse crime than stealing your children’s future.

Yes, it’s very ironic that the youth of America voted for a man who intended to sacrifice their future and condemn them to a life of crumbling greyness. I noticed the same suicidal behavior at KSC: The NASA people that I worked with were all big Clinton supporters; I could never understand why they loved a man who essentially gave the U.S. manned space program to the Russians and cut their budget by 30%.

I guess Ayn Rand would have called that sort of suicidal behavior The Sanction of the Victim.

I had forgotten that the Challenger was lost 25 years ago today. Rather than “High Flight”, I believe this poem by Heinlein is a better tribute to those who were lost.

The Green Hills of Earth

Let the sweet fresh breezes heal me
As they rove around the girth
Of our lovely mother planet
Of the cool, green hills of Earth.

We’ve tried each spinning space mote
And reckoned its true worth:
Take us back again to the homes of men
On the cool, green hills of Earth.

The arching sky is calling
Spacemen back to their trade.
ALL HANDS! STAND BY! FREE FALLING!
And the lights below us fade.

Out ride the sons of Terra,
Far drives the thundering jet,
Up leaps a race of Earthmen,
Out, far, and onward yet —

We pray for one last landing
On the globe that gave us birth;
Let us rest our eyes on the fleecy skies
And the cool, green hills of Earth.

Skooks Sputnik Monroe Great story Bar scene reminds me of “Come a Little Bit Closer” by Jay and the Americans circa 1967. Remember it? Chuck Berry 84 and still duck walking did 2 shows N.Y.E. in N.Y.C. Music can truly bring us all closer together.

Skookum– Yeah, I thought I was over the Challenger, but posting that poem brought back all the memories of that horrible day.

On another sad note, I just got a phone call from Florida and the man who launched the first Space Shuttle on April 12, 1981 – Chuck Hannon – passed away yesterday. He built a cabin down the road from me here in NC, and hanging in the entryway is the photo of him and NASA Test Director Andy Brown. They’re standing up front in the firing room with big smiles on their faces and in the background, all the engineers at the consoles are standing up cheering. What a day.

I wasn’t there then, but I heard that after the launch about 500 people drove down to the B&H store on N. Merritt Island and had a big street party. This must have been just after noon, and I heard they blocked the entire road (S.R. 3) with their celebration.

God speed, Chuck.

National Sputnik Monroe Day March 24, 2011! Hope you can make it!