Quote Ferocious Aardvark="Ferocious Aardvark"The other thing that strikes me is just how brave these guys were. The more you learn about the Apollo program, the more you understand just what was involved, the scarier it becomes. Just re-entry into Earth's atmosphere seems almost impossible; aim the floor of the craft at the atmosphere, and basically start to burn up like a meteorite to slow down a craft with no brakes and almost no controls, hurtling in from space and essentially just falling straight out of the sky.
Or on the Moon itself, no fuel to spare, and just one single chance that the take-off engine would ignite, take off and burn properly, with no backup.
I don't know how they picked the coolest men but Armstrong took manual control when the guidance computer overloaded and landed the Eagle by hand, with about 10 seconds fuel left. Then of course you had the matter-of-fact supercool of the Apollo 13 crew, when they were millimetres away from certain death but reacted as if they were in a car that had just developed a misfire.
I was always just in awe of the astronauts, and still am.'"
That pretty much sums up my thinking and saves me the job.
There again Apollo 13, who can remember all the crew?
I know Tom Hanks was one of them.
I was also very impressed at how the Yanks had beaten those nasty Russians to the punch.
