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Thanks, Graeme. Yeah, especially since one of the things we were briefing to the crew was how close to the recovery ship could you get when flying the entry manually – I’m guessing my 20G plunges would have skewed the data a tad. And talk about competitiveness – how cool would that have been to try in the motion-based (i.e. centrifugal) simulator. Now that you mention it, I’ll bet the crews did some unorthodox (and unrecorded) simulations themselves. (Dogfights in the centrifuge! How could they resist? Most of them were ex fighter pilots.)
Thank you for sharing this with us.
Good thing you didn’t mention the snap roll & 20 G dive to the actual crews…
Of course, being dedicated highly trained pilots they would never have done any such stupid thing in actual flight… self-preservation and all that.. but…
If you had told them, I could see their jet fighter experience kicking in during simulations… many hours of valuable training time wasted….
In fact, I can envision the Apollo Command module pilot wondering “Hey? Can I dogfight with the LEM in this thing? Let’s find out!”
Now THAT would have been something!