Headline, June06, 2013

'''THERE-B​UT-FOR-

THE​-GRACE-OF-​GOD-GOES-!WOW!'''

Friday, November 21, 1969 : Aboard Yankee Clipper, in lunar orbit.

Bean was looking out the window. It was the first chance he'd had to relax and play tourist since arriving at the moon more than two days earlier. He thought about how strange it felt to orbit the moon. 

The strangest thing about it was the silence. There wasn't any engine noise, the way there always was in an airplane.

And it seemed and felt damn odd to see the spacecraft fly in the same direction no matter how it was pointed. Orbiting the moon. Bean thought, was much more of a science fiction experience than walking on it had been. 

Yesterday, during the rendezvous, he'd been slaving away at the backup computer and the navigation charts while Conrad flew the lunar module. They had one more burn to do.

Finally, when he and Conrad had returned to the Mother Ship, Gordon was happier than Bean had ever seen him. He was offering them a drink of water. And in that moment, Bean was filled with a love for his crewmates that he had never experienced.

Years later, Bean would say, his most special memories of the flight would not be about the Moon or the Earth; they would be about Pete Conrad and Dick Gordon.

And Conrad had said to him, ''Why don't you just quit the after the midcourse, and relax and enjoy it? You can take a minute and fly this vehicle.''  Startled by Pete's audacity, Bean wondered, wouldn't it put them off course? Bean realized that Conrad had planned this perfectly. No one would know as they were on the far side of the moon. A rare gesture of honor from a remarkable and gifted commander.

Now Bean looked out at the bright, bleak cylinder passing beyond his window. It was so utterly inhospitable. Everything in the universe has some function, Bean thought, but what is the function of the moon? Is it to make the tides? Maybe it was as the geologist said : the moon is here to tell us the story that had been lost forever on our own planet. Maybe. the moon would tell us where we came from. Bean didn't know the answer.

As Yankee Clipper circled, Bean looked, and now and then, he wondered. he realized now, with his neck farther out than it had ever been, that life is too precious to spend it living by someone else's rules, even the unwritten ones of the Astronaut Office. He would be a good Astronaut, but he would so it his way. As the moon bore silent witness, he told himself,'' When i get back home........if I get back home------------I'm going to live my life the way I want to.''

You might ask yourself if the world needs another addictive honor, and you'd will be well within your rights. But as far as I know, and in all fairness, a great majority of us find the genre.......kind of addictive  -almost a substitute for drug consumption, like literary methadone.

We crave the vicarious rushes and crashes, the closeup of sea of problems that surrounds the students. Join up on !WOW! : The World Students Society Computers-Internet-Wireless.

Your Mother Ship!

Respectful dedication to the world's Stolen Hearts, Stolen Spirits, Stolen Dreams.

Good Night & God Bless!

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless