As both the United States and the Soviet Union considered extravehicular activity, the important issue was what the space traveler would wear outside the spacecraft. As the two would approach it at roughly the same time, there wasn't really any time for the United States to glean any intelligence off the near-tragedy of Alexei Leonov's spacesuit blowing up like a balloon. Not that they figured it out before their turn. The base of the Project Gemini spacesuit was the X-15 pressure suit. It would be evolved by the David Clark Company into the G3C spacesuit. Only used in Gemini 3, the G3C would consist of six layers of nylon and Nomex, the innermost of which was rubberized to form a pressure garment. Nomex was a new material at the time, and was for fire resistance. It would have a helmet with built-in earphones and microphone for communication. Gemini 4 would introduce the G4C spacesuit. Additional layers of Mylar were added for thermal protection specifically during extravehicular activity. In addition, the command pilot would wear a version with removable boots, while the junior pilot would wear a onesie-style bodysuit without removable boots. The G4C also added an emergency portable air pack in case the EVA umbilical was severed. For Gemini 4, it contained 9 minutes of oxygen. All other missions would be increased to 30 minutes. The G4C used by Gene Cernan during Gemini 9A was further modified with a Chromel-R outer layer, and a face visor made of polycarbonate instead of Plexiglas. This was in anticipation of testing the Air Force's Astronaut Maneuvering Unit for the Manned Orbiting Laboratory. It was also used by Buzz Aldrin for Gemini 12, though its AMU test was canceled. Gemini 7 would have a further modification to the spacesuit, the G5C. It was designed to be removable inside the spacecraft, permitting Frank Borman and Jim Lovell to be the first American astronauts to live inside their spacecraft in a shirtsleeve environment. Gemini 7 would be the only mission to use the G5C suit. The initial Apollo Block I spacesuit, the A1C, was based on the Gemini G3C. It added additional environmental and electrical disconnects. But when fire burned through the spacesuits in the Apollo 204 disaster, further use of the Block I Apollo CSM, as well as the A1C spacesuit, was canceled. The incident likely played no small role in David Clark losing the competition for the Apollo Block II spacesuit to International Latex's ILC-Dover division. The A7L spacesuit would replace the Nomex in the Gemini spacesuits with beta cloth, a derivative of Teflon that included silica fibers. The G3C suit would go on to be modified for use for various high-altitude Air Force aircraft, including the SR-71, and would be a basis for the Shuttle Advanced Crew Escape System (ACES) pressure suit.
Yesterday, NASA again postponed the return of Starliner Calypso. Now, there is no scheduled date for their return. There is a significant lack of transparency with this incident. NASA and Boeing are pretending nothing is seriously wrong, and this is due diligence. I'm biting my tongue on this one so hard, I'm tasting blood. This stinks to the high heavens, and a lot of online pundits are covering for NASA and Boeing on this.
Around dawn in the middle of Siberia 116 years ago today, a man was having breakfast when suddenly he saw an enormous fiery cloud rise to the north. He suddenly felt a wave of heat, as if his shirt had caught fire. Then a shock wave hit the buildings of his village, shattering windows. He was thrown several metres, suffering a concussion, but was not hurt worse. ******** 40 miles to the north, near the Tunguska river, an air burst had taken place. It is believed to have been caused by a meteor approximately 60 metres across exploding in the atmosphere. The estimate of the size of the explosion has ranged 3-50 megatons TNT equivalent. It flattened 830 square miles of forest. Anywhere else in the world, it would've destroyed a large city, and potentially killed hundreds of thousands if not millions. Where it did hit, only three people certainly died. Much fiction has been written about the event, owing to it having occured at a time and place where it is actually shrouded in mystery. Of course, 11 years later, history nearly repeated itself when an air burst occurred over Chelyabinsk, around 2,500 miles to the west. It was caused by a meteor believed to be about a third the size of the one that caused Tunguska. That event injured 1,491, mostly from broken class, but caused no deaths.
NASA has awarded SpaceX an $843 million contract to develop methods and equipment to deal with de-orbiting the International Space Station. The contract does not include launch costs, or set a date for disposal. The delta-v required to de-orbit the ISS has been estimated at 57 m/s. But the full weight of the ISS is approximately 420 metric tons. I'm not making this up. The ISS will be able to use its on-board engines to lower its orbit from its operational orbit of 266 miles to around 205 miles. From there, it would spend a year allowing drag to slowly pull it down to 155 miles. After an initial burn to lower its perigee to 90 miles, the contract suggests the de-orbit vehicle will direct the ISS to re-enter over the South Pacific, far away from any inhabited areas.
It's looking like Ariane 6 is finally about to have its debut flight. Too bad we can't have closer images of it on the launch pad. It is now standing tall at Pad A-4, Guiana Space Centre, for a launch Tuesday afternoon at 2pm EDT. It is carrying nine cubesats between two dispensers, and two satellites that are re-entry tests. One is by ArianeGroup. The other is by The Exploration Company, which is looking to build a crewed spacecraft. ******** Also pencined in for July 9 is Turksat 6A, planned atop a Falcon 9 rocket. Turksat 6A has been on the drawing board for a decade. It is set to be Turkey's first indigenously-produced comsat, designed a built by a consortium of Turkish companies. Stationed at 42°E, it will have an X-band transceiver exclusive for Turkey, and two Ku-band transceivers pointed toward the east and west portions of its coverage range. ******** Penciled in for July 30 is the next Atlas V launch, an Atlas V 551 with a classified reconnaissance satellite for the U.S. Space Force. It will be the 100th, and last, DoD launch for the Atlas V. Its remaining launches will all carry either Kuiper launches or Starliner. Two things that aren't even certain to ever be launched (again).
48 years ago today, Palapa A1 was launched atop a Delta 2914 rocket from Pad 17A, Cape Canaveral. Palapa A1 was the first comsat commissioned by Perumtel, one of the progenitors of the modern PT Indosat. It featured an enlarged parabolic antenna to better reach the entirety of the Indonesian archipelago. Its name comes from the Palapa oath, an oath made by ancient Javan general Gajah Mada in the 14th century to unite the Javan peoples of present-day Indonesia. The name was given to the satellite series by Suharto himself. Palapa A1 would last until 1985. A copy of the comsat, Palapa A2, would be launched the next year, and last until 1988.
Ariane 6 completed its first launch yesterday at 5pm EDT. It successfully released both cubesat dispensers. But the Vinci engine of the upper stage failed to re-ignite to lower its orbit for a deorbit burn and release of its reentry module tests. The anomaly was attributed to an APU power failure. As a result, the upper stage will be left in LEO to eventually re-enter naturally. Neither reentry module will be released to minimize space junk. The only other launch planned for Ariane 6 in 2024 is an Earth observation satellite for CNES, currently penciled in for Q4 2024. We'll see if this anomaly delays that launch, or if they will have time to study the upper stage issue given the current schedule.
52 years ago today, Rockwell was getting to work on final design for the Space Shuttle orbiter. They were trying to determine what to do if the heat shield sustained serious damage, or if the propulsion system failed. One of the ideas proposed was actually carrying an Apollo command module in the payload bay. I don't know what other solutions were proposed, but they were all eliminated as unacceptable penalties to payload capacity. They also determined that any upper stages set to be carried aboard the orbiter would need to be man-rated to ensure safety of the crew. For the moment at least, that meant carrying liquid-fueled upper stages in the payload bay was unsafe. This would be re-evaluated later, but the Challenger disaster would ultimately save NASA from themselves in that aspect.
With the continued issues with Starliner, let's check out Sierra Space and Dream Chaser. Toward the end of June, Sierra Space stated that Dream Chaser will not fly in 2024. United Launch Alliance CEO Tory Bruno said the decision was Sierra's. Sierra must have looked at the issues with the Starliner CFT, and decided they need to make absolutely sure nothing would go wrong with Tenacity's debut flight. Especially since they still hope to use Dream Chaser with humans someday. The second flight of Vulcan will instead take place in September with a boilerplate verification payload. Currently, there are two other scheduled Vulcan flights in 2024. Both scheduled for December, one will carry test payloads for the U.S. Air Force, the U.S. Space Force, and NASA. The other will carry next-gen situational awareness satellites for the Space Force. There is a small chance Tenacity could fly by the end of 2024 after all. But Sierra Space is aiming for early 2025. ******** Blue Origin is aiming for the debut launch of New Glenn on September 29. Carrying the prodigal EscaPADE twin cubesats on their mission to Mars, it's probably the greatest case of overkill in the history of space exploration. They will study the tenuous magnetosphere of the red planet. ******** The first orbital test flight of India's Gaganyaan spacecraft is currently penciled in to possibly launch in December. The LVM3 rocket that will carry it has been shifted as the Human-rated Launch Vehicle Mark 3 (HLVM3). The main distinction of HLVM3 is the reinforced triple O-rings in the segments of its SRBs. They learned the lessons of the Challenger disaster, and they aren't taking any chances. Both the human-rated SRBs and the Vikas engines of the first stage will operate at slightly lower chamber pressures than their non-human payload counterparts. Though this also means they will run slightly longer.
12 years ago today, Soyuz TMA-05M was launched atop a Soyuz-FG rocket from Site 1/5, Baikonur Cosmodrome. On-board with spacecraft commander Yuri Malenchenko would be American astronaut Sunita Williams and Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshida. They would be joining the crew of Soyuz TMA-04M for Expedition 32. All were spaceflight veterans, with Hoshide on his first ISS expedition. Six days later, they would receive the third Japanese HTV cargo spacecraft, Kounotori 3. Joe Acaba berthed it at Harmony nadir, and it remained attached until early September. A week and a half later, they received Progress M-16M. When Soyuz TMA-05M left and was replaced by Soyuz TMA-06M, Expedition 32 commander Gennady Padalka would transfer command of the ISS to Sunita Williams for Expedition 33. The next month, they received the first operational Dragon spacecraft docking, Cargo Dragon CRS-1. Also using the CBM at the time, Akihiko Hoshide would use Canadarm2 to berth it at Harmony nadir. It would remain docked for 2 1/2 weeks. Progress M-17M would visit just after Halloween. Soyuz TMA-05M would depart on November 18, with Sunita turning command over to Kevin Ford for Expedition 34. They would undock at 5:16pm EST, and land 3 hours later not far from Arkalyk.
There hasn't been much in the way of launch activity from SpaceX. That's because their last launch on Friday actually ended in failure. I know. I was shocked, too. I’ve never seen that much ice built up. Was there a liquid Oxygen leak? pic.twitter.com/tHyFnVddGm— ⭕️ CyberMike ⭕️ (@CyberMikeOG) July 12, 2024 As the second stage burn progressed, people noticed an inordinate amount of ice forming around the engine. As it turns out, there was a leak in the liquid oxygen toward the end of the burn. As a result, it cut off a little early, and the Starlink dispenser was left short of its needed deployment orbit. We’re updating satellite software to run the ion thrusters at their equivalent of warp 9. Unlike a Star Trek episode, this will probably not work, but it’s worth a shot.The satellite thrusters need to raise orbit faster than atmospheric drag pulls them down or they burn up.— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 12, 2024 Not that Elon didn't try to deploy the satellites anyway. Each pass through perigee removes 5+ km of altitude from the highest point in the satellite orbit. At this level of drag, our maximum available thrust is unlikely to be enough to successfully raise the satellites.— SpaceX (@SpaceX) July 12, 2024 The satellites didn't stand a chance. The orbit was so low, they all de-orbited by the next day. This particular launch was from Vandenberg. The next launch will be early Friday morning from Pad 40, Cape Canaveral. We'll see if that was just a fluke. Though I'm sure they took extra time to inspect the rocket. Especially the upper stage's Merlin Vacuum 1D engine. ******** Though the next several Starlink flights are back on, it appears most of SpaceX's commercial launches have been temporarily held otherwise. The only one in a close timeframe with a certain schedule is the next SpaceX launch for Cygnus, Cygnus NG-21. This one has been named in honor of STS-51-L commander Dick Scobee. It is penned in for August 3 at 10am EDT from Pad 40. There is no word yet on what it will be carrying to the ISS. ******** Meanwhile, Electron looks to continue its winning streak with its third launch for Capella's Acadia SAR constellation. The mission, "A Sky Full of SARs", is currently set for Saturday afternoon at 3:15pm EDT from Pad 1B, Mahia. ******** Although the H3 rocket is ready for prime time, there are two H-IIA rockets remaining for JAXA to exhaust. The first will carry a radar intelligence satellite for Japanese intelligence. It has a two-hour window that will open at Midnight EDT, September 11. The final launch will carry an Earth observation satellite for JAXA, and is currently penciled in for September.
With 6x more propellant and 4x the power of today’s Dragon spacecraft, SpaceX was selected to design and develop the U.S. Deorbit Vehicle for a precise, controlled deorbit of the @Space_Station https://t.co/GgtuplTwqQ pic.twitter.com/E23sS7CE4U— SpaceX (@SpaceX) July 17, 2024 NASA and SpaceX are providing details on the U.S. De-Orbit Vehicle for EOL for the International Space Station. The vehicle will be derived from the Dragon 2 spacecraft. But the trunk will be replaced with a more robust service module with six times the fuel of a normal Crew Dragon, and solar panel wings with four times the power capacity.
58 years ago today, Gemini 10 was launched atop a Titan II GLV from Pad 19, Cape Kennedy. The launch took place 73 minutes after its Agena Target Vehicle was launched atop an Atlas-Agena rocket from Pad 14, Cape Kennedy. About six hours after launch, at 12:15am EDT, Gemini 10 would dock with its ATV. Without the malfunctions of Gemini 8, the crew was able to use the Agena's engine to lift its apogee to 763 km. After a sleep period, they would use the Agena to lower their orbit to 294x382 km. After entering their final cruising orbit, junior pilot Michael Collins did a standup EVA from the capsule. He used a couple different cameras to get astronomical photos of the sky and the Milky Way in visible light and ultraviolet. Soon, he and command pilot John Young found they were suffering eye irritation. They closed the capsule hatches six minutes early (it lasted 49 minutes), and discovered lithium hydroxide from the carbon dioxide scrubbers was leaking into the oxygen supply. They ran the oxygen at a high rate to flush the cabin atmosphere. During day 3 of the mission, Gemini 10 maneuvered to the ATV from Gemini 8 to examine it after capsule RMS issues caused a tumble during that mission. They were able to stationkeep with it stably at a distance of 10 feet, becoming the first manned spacecraft to rendezvous with two different spacecraft. Collins would do his actual free-floating EVA here. He used the handheld maneuvering unit to move closer to Gemini 8's ATV and retrieve the samples that Dave Scott would've retrieved if that mission didn't go awry. The second EVA lasted 39 minutes. One last standup EVA would involve discarding Collins' EVA umbilical and portable oxygen chestpack. The total mission lasted just short of 3 days. They splashed down about 300 miles east of Nassau, only 3 km away from its recovery ship, the amphibious assault vessel USS Guadalcanal.
The Polaris Dawn crew recently completed a series of spacesuit acceptance tests in preparation for the mission’s extravehicular activity, or spacewalk, marking the final significant developmental and test milestone for SpaceX’s newly-developed EVA spacesuit →… pic.twitter.com/SOK0ImGir2— Polaris (@PolarisProgram) July 18, 2024 Polaris Dawn is in the final stretch of preparations, as they have completed testing on the new EVA-ready SpaceX suit. I'd love to tell you more, but AT&T appears to be censoring the Polaris program website. I kid you not. Maybe it has to do with the ongoing Microsoft Crowdstrike outages, I don't know. For this mission, the docking hatch will be replaced with a new hatch codenamed the "skywalker" to assist with EVA egress and ingress. Currently the mission is penciled in for early next month. But making sure the upper stage issue last week was only a fluke is likely crucial to finally setting up a solid schedule for this mission.
So once I fixed all the Crowdstrike issues at my own office today, I found I could access the Polaris website from work. And I got some of the info on what the final round of SpaceX EVA suit testing entailed. They went to Johnson Space Center and used the vacuum chambers there to have all four Polaris Dawn astronauts test the suits in a vacuum environment. They utilized the suits at rest, in normal workloads, and at elevated workloads to get baselines on how thermal management behaved in a vacuum. The vacuum chambers at Johnson Space Center were added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1985, but are still actively used by NASA. The current plan is for commander Jared Isaacman and mission specialist Sarah Gillis to exit Crew Dragon Resilience through the skywalker hatch, while pilot Scott Poteet and medical officer Anna Meñon remain seated inside. The EVA will take place after the operations at their highest intended orbit, which is planned to have an apogee of 1,400 km, the highest Earth-bound orbit yet attained by a crewed mission. They will then lower Resilience to a 700km circular orbit for the EVA and the remainder of the mission.
34 years ago today, the Combined Release and Radiation Effects Satellite (CRRES) was launched atop the first Atlas I rocket from Pad 36B, Cape Canaveral. The purpose of CRRES was to study the effects of the Van Allen radiation belts on satellites transiting through it. To this end, it was launched into a geosynchronous transfer orbit (GTO), and left there. Its perigee after launch was 347 km. It was expected to last three years, but failed after 15 months. It's believed that its backup battery failed. The Atlas I(as in "one", not the letter I) was essentially a slightly enhanced, rebranded Atlas G-Centaur rocket. It would be the last version to use the classic stage-and-a-half design. It would suffer failures in three of its next four launches; two caused by the Centaur, the last by an improperly torqued screw in the first stage engine. Its final launch would be in 1997, as it was replaced by the Atlas II.
Sounds like they think they know what is causing the failure of the thrusters: No certain return timeline for Starliner or the two astronauts. And the Helium leaks are still not explained in this article, although it alludes to them having a good idea and conducting further testing this weekend. It seems like the leaks are stable and likely not going to be a critical issue, and they have workarounds if they get worse. Wild stuff.
FALCON 9 RETURNS TO FLIGHTThis morning’s launch of 23 Starlink satellites, seen here transiting the Moon, was the first since a July 11 second stage anomaly during a Starlink mission from California grounded the Falcon fleet. In just 15 days, SpaceX identified and resolved the… pic.twitter.com/HMi0T365Bq— John Kraus (@johnkrausphotos) July 27, 2024 Falcon 9 finally took flight again early this morning after 15 days of study. SpaceX figured out that the issue was with a sensor for liquid oxygen pressure in the upper stage. The sensor caused damage to the liquid oxygen line it connects to. They are working on a permanent fix. For the next several launches, the sensor will not be included. This RTF launch delivered 23 Starlink satellites from Pad 39A, Kennedy Space Center, at 1:45am EDT. The next flight is late tonight 12:13am EDT from Pad 40, Cape Canaveral. It will be followed three hours later by a launch from Pad 4E, Vandenberg SFB. Another Starlink launch is scheduled from Pad 40 early Friday morning. The launch of Cygnus NG-21 S.S. Dick Scobee is still planned for next Saturday, though pushed back just a hair to 11:28am EDT. The next mass rideshare, Transporter-11, is penciled in for August 15. It will carry 26 smallsats and two space tugs carrying a multitude of cubesats.
59 years ago today, the final Saturn I rocket was launched on mission AS-105 from Pad 37B, Cape Kennedy. It would launch Apollo CSM boilerplate DP-9A into a 352 mi x 332 mi orbit around Earth. Remaining on the S-IV second stage was the third Pegasus micrometeoroid detection satellite. The successful launch meant that Saturn I had succeeded in all 10 of its test flights. The first test flight of its next version, the Saturn IB, would take place in 1966. The S-IV stage and Pegasus 3 would re-enter in August 1969. The CSM boilerplate wouldn't re-enter until November 1975.
Rocket Lab's latest launch for StriX, "Owl for One and One for Owl", took place this afternoon at 12:15pm EDT. But it almost went sideways. During first-stage separation, the first stage of the Electron rocket was observed pitching while falling away. The edge of it barely cleared the Rutherford Vacuum engine's exhaust bell. The rest of the launch took place as usual, and there appeared to be no further drama to the launch.
40 years ago today, two comsats were launched atop the first Ariane 3 rocket from Pad A-1, Guiana Space Centre. Eutelsat 2 was the second comsat for Eutelsat. It was placed at 7°E with a geosyncronous inclination of 3°, and operated for nine years. Telecom 1A was specifically for France Telecom. It was positioned at 8°W with an inclination of 8.5°. It would remain in service for eight years. Ariane 3 was the first evolution of the original Ariane 1 rocket. The new first-stage engine, the Viking 5B, would have about 40,000 lb-f less thrust than the Ariane 1's Viking 5 engine. But unlike Ariane 2, Ariane 3 would be augmented with two SEP P7.35 SRMs, adding a total of 560,000 lb-f of thrust at launch. This would give Ariane 3 a 50% boost in payload capacity to GTO over Ariane 1, to 2,700 kg. Although the unaugmented Ariane 2 had less thrust than Ariane 1, it also carried more fuel. And the second stage's improved Viking 4B engine had 14,000 lb-f more thrust than Ariane 1. This gave it 300 kg greater payload capacity to GTO over Ariane 1. Due to the backlog of Ariane 1 rockets, Ariane 2 would not see its debut until May 1986. Both would be retired in 1989, as they were replaced by the highly versatile Ariane 4.
Cygnus NG-21 SS Dick Scobee was launched yesterday afternoon. Shortly after separation from the second stage, it missed two windows to begin its orbit changes to reach the International Space Station. There is some confusion, but NASA says they have adjusted burns so that it can reach the ISS at its originally planned time. The fact that people continue to fret about Barry Wilmore and Sunita Williams is a complete PR failure for NASA. There are people claiming Starliner Calypso has completely failed, and it's only a matter of time before they switch to Crew Dragon...somehow. The lack of official updates only fuels this speculation. No matter what is really going on with that, NASA can no longer solely blame Boeing for this debacle. We need to know what's really going on. And we need to know when and how Butch and Suni are getting home.
Cygnus NG-21: The Cygnus cargo ship was maneuvered into position at the central Unity module's Earth-facing port and locked into place at 5:33 am EDT (0933 UTC) to complete the spacecraft's capture and berthing at the International Space Station pic.twitter.com/0YjyRtvZMV— William Harwood (@cbs_spacenews) August 6, 2024 Cygnus NG-21 SS Dick Scobee made it to the International Space Station this morning, and was berthed at Unity nadir at 5:34am EDT. Its propulsion system checked out okay after the initial missed orbit raising burns. It is believed that unpredicted thermal properties caused the low pressure readings that aborted both burns, probably a side effect of the larger fairing of the Falcon 9 rocket. It will be opened later this morning to begin unloading the pressurized cargo. It includes extra supplies to make up for the extended stay of Starliner CFT, as well as things specifically for its astronauts. Supposedly, those things do not include SpaceX pressure suits. There are also new experiments, and parts to repair one of the on-board telescopes. ******** More Starlink launches will take place from Cape Canaveral on Friday morning and Saturday, just under 24 hours apart. Then a pair of joint satellites for the UK Ministry of Defence and Inmarsat will be launched Sunday evening at 9pm EDT from Vandenberg SFB. The launch will be the final launch for first stage B1061.22.
James Irwin was born on March 17, 1930, in Pittsburgh. His father was a veteran of World War I. From an early age, he dreamed of going into space, and at one point told people he would be the first man to walk on the Moon. Graduating from high school at 17, he went straight to Navy, where he earned his bachelor's in naval science in 1951. He would later get a double master's in aeronautical engineering and instrumentation engineering from Michigan in 1957. Being commissioned in the Air Force, Jim's initial flight training took place at Hondo Air Base in Japan, but it precluded him from joining the Korean War. He graduated from Air Force Experimental Flight Test Pilot School in 1960. One of the jets he trained: the Lockheed YF-12 interceptor, the precursor to the SR-71. But in 1961, he was training another pilot who crashed the plane he was flying in. Both survived, but Jim suffered some serious injuries, and almost lost a leg. By this time, he had already been married and quickly divorced, self-admittedly due to his devotion to his work and cruel treatment of her. He subsequently found God, and would re-marry in 1959. He was selected to NASA as part of the Original 19 in 1966. He took part in a vacuum chamber qualification test of the Lunar Module. After Apollo 9, when Jim McDivitt positioned himself for retirement and Rusty Schweickart was shifted to the AAP, Jim was chosen to fill in as backup lunar module pilot for Apollo 12, placing him in Apollo 15. Ultimately, Jim would become the eighth man to walk on the Moon. But something happened while he was there. As noted previously, the water dispenser in his A7L extravehicular mobility unit broke during the first EVA, preventing him from intaking any water. The resulting dehydration led to a slow degradation of his condition through the other two EVAs. By the time he and Dave Scott had returned to CSM Endeavour, the mission's flight surgeon was alarmed by his EKG. He was throwing PVCs and PACs. He had begun to suffer a condition referred to as "bigeminy", where the atrial and ventricular contractions of his heartbeat had separated. If this had happened on Earth, he would've been sent to a hospital and treated for a heart attack. There was very real concern that Jim could've become the first person to die in space from a medical condition. Fortunately, between the pure oxygen environment (while lower pressure than Earth, still higher partial pressure of oxygen than on Earth) and the microgravity, he was already essentially in intensive care. Jim was given minimal work load, and monitored more closely than usual. By the time re-entry neared, the bigeminy had disappeared. Following the mission, Jim retired from NASA. Because of that, he was not as harshly affected personally by the stamp scandal that effectively ended Dave Scott and Al Worden's careers. He also retired from the Air Force as a colonel in 1972. He rededicated himself to his faith, and founded the High Flight Foundation. However, his health problems had only just begun. Even prior to Apollo 15, Jim was known to suffer disrythmias during strenuous exercise. In 1973, he suffered a heart attack while playing handball, and needed a triple-bypass. Only a few months later, he suffered another one while skiing. In 1986, he was found unresponsive during a run after yet another heart attack. He needed CPR after that one. One more heart attack 33 years ago today, his fifth if you count Apollo 15 as one, finished Jim Irwin off. He left his second wife and five children, all from the second marriage, and was buried at Arlington National Cemetery. He was the first—and, at age 61, by far the youngest—of the moonwalkers to die.