--- On Wed, 5/4/11, Clint Bradford clintbrad4d@earthlink.net wrote:
From: Clint Bradford clintbrad4d@earthlink.net Subject: [amsat-bb] Alan Who? To: amsat-bb@amsat.org, amsat-bb@amsat.org Received: Wednesday, May 4, 2011, 6:00 PM There is a tremendous amount to learn right now if you are one who organizes or promotes events.
Compare what occurred on this planet on April 12, when thousands of parties were held covering every continent, school lesson plans established, and incredible, informative Web sites established - including a celebratory movie - for the celebration of Yuri Gagarin's achievements ... versus what is happening for the anniversary of Alan Shepard's flight.
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I was only 5 years old at the time and I don't remember either Shepard's or Grissom's Mercury flights. I do recall, though, that John Glenn's mission received a lot of publicity, even here in Canada. That might explain why mention of Freedom 7 often results in "huh?" from people.
By the way, the flight of Freedom 7 is portrayed in both the movie "The Right Stuff" and in the first episode of the HBO series "From The Earth To The Moon". The air-ground traffic in the latter was taken from actual mission transcripts.
I also have a DVD copy of the NASA film "Freedom 7". It runs for about half an hour, nearly twice as long as the flight itself. I think I'll watch it tomorrow.
73s
Bernhard VA6BMJ @ DO33FL