Let the shockwave topple monuments

[sovay]

I felt much more ambivalent about the development of the Bell X-1 after I learned the history of the Miles M.52, but I still recognize the loss of Chuck Yeager. I grew up building and launching model rockets; one of my childhood talismans was a Matchbox SR-71. I can't remember not knowing about him.

Comments

[selkie]

I have learned more about your dreams of flight in the past two weeks than the previous nineteen years, but you’ve always been looking up, so it makes a wonderful kind of sense.

This thing I am writing for you is a MESS but I am pretty committed to the disaster.

[minoanmiss]

Oh wow. "Raising a light to his memory" takes on a whole new meaning for him.

[phi]

No! I hadn't read elsewhere, which is a testament to how far I've drifted from my career beginnings in aerospace. But gosh, some childhood heroes are supposed to be immortal. Even recognizing how problematic the whole test pilot culture was, it was also fucking cool and I imprinted on it young. I'm fairly certain that my desperate childhood desire to be a test pilot (in a corps that was still de facto all male) was a significant contributing factor to my gender dysphoria.

[sara]

Aw hell.

When I was growing up, most of the family worked in aerospace in one way or another. Our heroes have always been pilots.

[davidgillon]

I liked the tweet from Dan Rather:
'Thinking more of Chuck Yeager, and the lyrics of the old Air Force song echo in my mind: "Off we go into the wild blue yonder, Climbing high into the sun." RIP.'

[heron61]

"I can't remember not knowing about him." Same here, although I had no idea he'd lived this long.

one of my childhood talismans was a Matchbox SR-71. I can't remember not knowing about him. I'd have loved one of those. My own young association with the SR-71 was it was the plane the X-Men flew.

Allow me:

[nodrog]

> I grew up building and
> launching model rockets

Me, too.

http://www.accur8.com/Estes_Library.html

Ninfinger's scans are good, plus very much more:

http://www.ninfinger.org/rockets/rockets.html

And then there's the source:

https://estesrockets.com/catalogs/

Many fond memories.