Daily Archives: October 26, 2017

The last of Earth

The Economist: Joseph Schmitt died on September 25th.

“He was there when Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier in 1947; when Alan Shepard made America’s first manned space flight, in 1961; when John Glenn first orbited Earth, in 1962; when Apollo 8 went round the moon in 1968, and when Apollo 11’s module landed on it in 1969, for him the most mind-boggling moment of all. The team had never worked so hard at anything. But he went on for many years yet, to suit up men for the first Skylab flight and the first Shuttles, before in 1983 he left to get on with all the stuff at home that needed fixing.”