suborbital veterans? (was Re: Count of Surviving Veterans Merc/Gem/Apollo

From: Henry Spencer (henry_at_spsystems.net)
Date: 07/16/04 

Date: Fri, 16 Jul 2004 22:37:51 GMT

In article <FsWJc.3218$WP1.314@fe1.texas.rr.com>,
Jim Oberg <jameseoberg@houston.rr.com> wrote:
>I count 43 men who flew on Mercury through Apollo-Soyuz, of whom ten are
>dead (Shepard, Grissom, White, Conrad, Eisele,Swigert, Roosa, Irwin, Evans,
>and Slayton)...

An interesting thought occurred to me while looking at this list...

Is Scaled Composites's Mike Melvill currently the only man alive who has
flown a suborbital spaceflight?

(That is, to have reached 100km without going on to orbit?)

Shepard and Grissom, who flew the suborbital Mercury flights, are dead.
So is Joe Walker, the only X-15 pilot to reach 100km. The Russians didn't
do manned suborbital flights as a preliminary to their orbital flights,
and apparently neither did the Chinese. The US has never had a suborbital
abort. The one thing I'm not sure about is whether Lazarev and Makarov,
the crew of the April 1975 suborbital Soyuz abort, are still alive. 

-- 
"Think outside the box -- the box isn't our friend."    |   Henry Spencer
                                -- George Herbert       | henry@spsystems.net

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