Whipped Cream Difficulties

Major General Joe Engle (USAF – ret.), astronaut. He passed away on July 10th, but the obituary didn’t run until yesterday (and if it was reported elsewhere previously, I missed it). He was 91.

Mr. Engle was the last surviving X-15 pilot.

He flew 16 X-15 missions.

He earned his astronaut wings on June 29, 1965, when he took the X-15 to an altitude of 280,600 feet, or 53 miles, at 3,431 m.p.h.

He was selected for Apollo, and scheduled to fly on Apollo 17. But he was replaced on that mission by Harrison Schmitt, and moved to Apollo 18. Apollo 18, of course, was cancelled.

In 1981, Mr. Engle, by then an Air Force colonel, went back to space as the commander of the second flight of the shuttle Columbia with the pilot Richard Truly. They demonstrated that the Columbia could be reused, but they had to return three days early because of a fuel cell failure. (Mr. Truly died in February.)
Four years later, Mr. Engle was the commander of the shuttle Discovery, which deployed three communications satellites and fixed an existing one.
He retired from the Air Force in 1986 and was promoted to major general, having flown more than 180 types of aircraft and logged more than 14,000 flight hours.

Quote of the day:

“If you lie down and let someone put a water-soaked bale of hay on your head and try to lift it,” he said, “that’s the feeling you have when gravity is pulling.”

NASA tribute page.

Quote of the day 2:

“I never met an airplane I didn’t like. Some of them are less relaxing and less enjoyable and less fun to fly, and some of them are a lot more work to fly than others, but they’ve all got their own characteristics, they’ve all got their own personality, and I really, really enjoy any new airplane, any airplane.”