Al Bean

Godspeed Al Bean.

Only 4 left now.

He surely slipped the surly bonds of earth and went to a place few have been but in future may return too.

Rest in Peace Captain for you have seen and done things few have done or will do in the future. An inspiration to a generation who looked up to the stars and reached out, held them in their hand and came home safely to the earth.

A real gentleman, he will be sadly missed.

RIP Sir.

Tops my list of ‘favourite astronaut’, I shall be watching again the Apollo 12 episode of the HBO series ‘From the Earth to the Moon’ in his honour - the best of the series in my opinion. I sadly never met him but we did communicate by email, specifically I asked him about the ‘ACE to AUX’ event during the Apollo 12 launch - how could he & the rest of the Crew be so unfamiliar with a switch placed right in front of him even given the complexity of the panel? As I recall he said he’d only ever touched it once during all the hours in the simulator, not sure what that says about the ergonomics of the design in terms of necessity for access but it was certainly well placed for the one time it was needed in the program.

RIP, Sir.

Ken - ‘SCE to Aux’ - Signal Conditioning Equipment - restored downlink data after the lightning strike. Often forgotten is that he commanded a Skylab mission as well. To have had a fraction of his talent; USNTPS, NASA and then a remarkable artist - and, according to all, a bl**dy nice bloke.