Newsgroups: sci.space.shuttle
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: An idea
Message-ID: <1989Oct4.041357.22698@utzoo.uucp>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <3743@rtech.rtech.com> <1401.251BA8CC@branch.FIDONET.ORG> <1989Sep26.220340.13871@ziebmef.mef.org> <1989Sep27.110807.2646@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu> <212@v7fs1.UUCP> <1989Sep29.164653.29049@utzoo.uucp> <1511@hiatus.dec.com>
Date: Wed, 4 Oct 89 04:13:57 GMT

In article <1511@hiatus.dec.com> fisher@moon.dec.com writes:
>> >>:In the movie ``Marooned'' (circa 1966)...
>
>The book and the movie were significantly different.  In the book, it was
>a hypothetical Mecury 7 which was stranded, and they rescued it with a
>never-before-flown Titan/Gemini... ... In the movie, it was a Gemini or
>an Apollo that was stranded (I think I remember three people), and they
>sent up some sort of thing which I always thought was a Dyna-Soar...

You've missed a key fact:  there were, in fact, two versions of the book.
(I read both.)  The original was indeed a long-duration Mercury [such
things were planned but never flown] rescued by a Vostok and a Gemini.
The book was later rewritten to match the movie, which updated the choice
of spacecraft to match the progress of spaceflight.  The revised version
had a Skylab crew [although that name was not used, as it had not been
chosen at the time] in an Apollo CSM rescued by a Soyuz and an "X-RV (the
orbital version of the X-24A lifting body spacecraft)" [quote from the
foreword of the revised edition, which I have].
-- 
Nature is blind; Man is merely |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
shortsighted (and improving).  | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu