Penelope’s Loom

Author's Note:  I do apologize in advance for the appalling formatting in the following post.  I am still learning the woeful word processing barely available on this blogging site.   Ah, Wallis.  Who were you? A woman.  An opportunist? Most likely.  A divorcee twice over? Yes, certainly.  A sexual predator? Jesus.  A woman to be scorned? Ye Gods. The decade is the wicked 1930s, folks, time of the Great Depression.  The characters are an older Prince of Wales (international playboy of mystery), and an American woman, Wallis Simpson, currently married to  London businessman, Ernest Simpson.  The classic triangle. Now, what normally would have been a run-of-the-mill royal scandal, ballooned eventually into a national crisis for Great Britain.  But, how did it begin?  Well, it begins, as any historical drama, with the types of people involved.  In this case, a Prince of Wales who was a rather desperate character--a man w...

 Anyone you talk to would probably not know about the mission of Apollo 9.  It was crewed by some of the best astronauts in the program:  James McDivitt ,  David Scott . and  Rusty Schweickart ,  . I am hoping that some of you are curious about these men, because they were some of the best of the Apollo program. The mission was a complex one.  The spacecraft had to connect (link) with another space craft (the LEM, or Lunar Excursion Module) while in orbit.  Wow.  Then, the two ships (after linkage) flew together to the moon.  This was Earth orbit rendezvous.   It was also this mission's directive to test our the LEM in space--fly it, try a fuel burn, and then connect with the command module.  They were also testing out a new type of space suit! Honestly, with the men in this crew, you really couldn't complain--they were quiet, contained, and extremely competent.  As this mission was a complex one, this was indeed fortunate...

  The Apollo program, was NASA's name for the successive manned missions to the Moon.  So many different experiments had to be made, in order to  This is a list that I ripped off from another site, but I did it because it has links to biographical and mission information...  Neil Armstrong  (1930-2012)– Apollo 11 Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin  (1930-)– Apollo 11 Charles "Pete" Conrad  (1930-1999)– Apollo 12 Alan Bean  (1932-2018)– Apollo 12 Alan B. Shepard Jr.  (1923-1998)– Apollo 14 Edgar D. Mitchell  (1930-2016)– Apollo 14 David R. Scott  (1932-)– Apollo 15 James B. Irwin  (1930-1991)– Apollo 15 John W. Young  (1930-2018)– Apollo 10  (orbital),  Apollo 16  (landing) Charles M. Duke  (1935-)– Apollo 16 Eugene Cernan  (1934-2017)– Apollo 10  (orbital),  Apollo 17  (landing) Harrison H. Schmitt  (1935-)– Apollo 17 Few seem to remember Apollo 1, and this is wrong, because the men who manned...

 Some guys have the right stuff, as Tom Wolfe said. Some pilots have the guts and the yearning to just see the stars and not through a telescope.  Some people just have to see nebulas up close and personal. Some pilots just have the right stuff.  Chuck Yeager sure had it. What a pilot. Not only was he a WW2 ace, but he was one of the first to break the sound barrier—an action that broke us into the age of jet travel, and therefore ushered in the term ‘supersonic’.   But he was over the age limit when the government came calling.  It was the late 1950s and the govt space program was just beginning. It was the job of NASA to find the YOUNG best of the best. And so they did. What we ended up with were the infamous Mercury astronauts. A truly brave bunch of guys. Are you noticing anything strange here? By the standards of today I mean  anything glaringly odd? No women? No men of color? Do you know that there were women pilots who were tested alongside these men...

 At the end of my last post I made a brief reference to the American space rice. A race with whom? With the united Soviet socialist republic. Also known as Russia. But let us begin with this: No if any of you haven’t already seen the movie “Apollo 13 “, I’m just going to curl up and die. After seeing this you want to watch that movie. You have to begin with nazis. These are the first truly big brains to lend themselves toward our emergent space race in the late 40s and early 50s. However it would take the rest of the decade for Eisenhower to create NASA. And if we’re beginning with the Nazis then we have to begin with one in particular, his name was Werner von Braun.  No old Werner was perhaps Germany’s top rocket scientist. He had gathered a bunch of like minded men to work with him at a site known as Peenemunde.  There of course he had not only an army of scientist, but it equally vest hoard of concentration camp prisoners to fulfill his every wish and desire. Well they...