Bleedin' Dangerous
Just finished Mike Mullane's "Riding Rockets" about his jaunts in the Shuttle, and it's jolly unsafe, this space malarkey. At least Apollo had launch-escape systems, but for phases of the Shuttle launch, you were stuffed. Mullane states that the "Contingency Abort" checklist, to cover 'landing' in the Atlantic was there to "give you something to read while you died". If you got beyond that gate, the next was a landing in Africa or Spain, seventeen minutes after lift off, although they didn't carry their passports.
I never realised that you could get woken up by cosmic rays hitting the optic nerve, & appearing as a bright flash.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
