Wally Schirra, one of the original Project Mercury astronauts, dies at 84

Originally published at Twixel.net. You can comment here or there.

Bloomberg.com: U.S.
May 3 (Bloomberg) — Walter M. “Wally” Schirra, one of the original Project Mercury astronauts, died today in California, almost a half-century after joining the program that sent the first Americans into space. He was 84.

NASA’s Kennedy Space Center confirmed Schirra’s death. He was the only astronaut to fly in the first three U.S. space programs: Mercury, Gemini and Apollo.

The U.S. chose Schirra and Alan Shepard Jr., John Glenn, Virgil “Gus” Grissom, Scott Carpenter, Gordon Cooper and D.K. Slayton as the first seven astronauts for its Project Mercury program. Grissom died in 1967, Slayton in 1993, Shepard in 1998 and Cooper in 2004.

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Sad. All these pioneers are dying off and we are rolling ever further backwards. It’s well over forty years since these guys did their thing and where are we now?

1st Republican Debate

Originally published at Twixel.net. You can comment here or there.

Well I got to watch this debate. As I expected - too many candidates at this stage to get much substance.
It was enough to get some impressions of all of them - which I had been lacking up till now.
Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani and John McCain got a lot of time. Chris Matthews didn’t do the best job of balancing.
Romney - Definitely the most polished. He makes my skin crawl though. I can’t tell what he really believes.
Giuliani - Waffled. I still don’t think this guy has anything close to what we need.
McCain - Wanted to seem decisive but came across as kind of angry to me.
Ron Paul got cut off hard by Matthews when he even got a chance to speak. It was noticeable.
The evolution question was interesting. As was the fact that any of them raised their hands to say they didn’t believe in it.
I couldn’t catch who all did (edit: It was Brownback, Tancredo and Huckabee) - but I figure it was the more overtly religious ones.
The guy that actually surprised me the most was Mike Huckabee.

But - no real revelations. I still can’t vote for any of them (with the possible exception of Ron Paul - who cannot get nominated).

Ultimately - if I were betting I’d say Romney will be the nominee.