Originally posted by VooWho
Yeager came to Tulsa, and my grandpa, my dad, and I went to see him. The place was packed, and Yeager would talk about how he hates NASA becuase they took over the space program. Yeager says if the Airforce still had control of the space program all of the Apollo crashes, and any other disasters wouldn't have happend. He said that the Airforce would wait tell it was safe enough to launch any rockets or space shuttles to space. He blaims NASA for most of the disasters becuase they were to eager to beat the Russians to the moon.
Yeager has a lot of antipithy to lots of folks, just read his book. The guy is sure everyone is out to get him because he's just so good. That's crap. This comes from his autobiography... "I was sabotaged, but it was ironic having the Air Force’s big test pilot hero back in test pilot school, hitting the books. ……The school was on base. The instructors made damned sure it wouldn’t be easy for me Their attitude was right out in the open: they would love to flunk me. … So I did what I was told and counted to three or four hundred. But I always remembered those nasty sons of *****es. If they were harassing me because of a cocky attitude or because I wasn’t doing my work, I would respect that. But this was spite. I put a little red flag next to the name of each one of those guys, and nailed them the first chance I got. That’s exactly what I did, and ruthlessly, too." Now if this guy doesn't sound "disturbed" I don't know who does.
I can't say he's completely wrong about the decision to go to straight rockets vice the DynaSoar but much of what he says is merely speculation and the success of NASA's moon program speaks for itself. As far as USAF doing a better job...well, they've had their share of disasters (XB-70 lost during a freaking photo shoot!!!) not to mention Yeager's own screwups with the NF-104. Besides, the only NASA "disasters" up and through all of the moon landings were Apollo 1 (which wasn't even a space shot) and Apollo 13 which didn't cost any lives. Challenger and Columbia came much later.
Funniest thing about him is that he single handedly ruined the NF-104 AST (an F-104 with a rocket mounted above the engine) program which was designed to be a space plane trainer to give student test pilots experience in space and operating reaction controls specifically so they could fly the Dynasoar. Curtis Lemay directed that Yeager was to use the NF-104 to take the high altitude record from the USSR but he never got over 104,000 ft. He boogered up each of his four flights and on the last put the plane in a spin and lost it. Funny part about it was that Bob Smith (another USAF test pilot) had consistently taken the plane to between 115,000 and 121,000 feet. Smith actually should hold the record but the flights weren't sanctioned record attempts so they didn't count (plus the USAF wasn't about to let Yeager be embarrassed). The Yeager attempt was canceled after Yeager screwed the pooch and the USAF put massive restrictions on flight of the plane to cover up his screwups.
I've met Yeager and talked with him....he may be a talented pilot but he's an prettythang.
Mace
