My silly brain immediately thought of Buck Rogers, specifically Episode 119 (Olympiad), which originally aired on February 7, 1980. A couple years back I tried rewatching the series on a lark and...it doesn't really hold up. I didn't even make it to this one, in fact.
But hey, they can't all be Battlestar Galactica (Lt Sheba was my fave, sorry, Col Deering). Or The Right Stuff.
Anyway, the only World Cup final that I've ever actually watched was at a hostel in Hirtshals, Denmark, during a biking tour in '86 (at the start of my first trip to the USSR). Met a guy with dual German and Aussie citizenship, who hated American culture (derided "Ma-drone-a") and Danish culture ("their beer is too warm"), and a Spanish dude who passed around gin in a flask (tried it, ick) and kept chanting, "Maraaadooooona, Maraaadoooona!" I was sad West Germany lost.
In conclusion: soccer is a sport of contrasts.
PS - Just remembered that I also rewatched a bit of Knight Rider in recent years, including the episode that Anne Lockhart was in. Oh yeah, I had a real crush on her. I think I still do.
Happy Gemini X launch day! To celebrate, I embedded some crappy video, starting just before staging, and then SECO (Second Stage Engine Cut-off), which Pilot Michael Collins described in his book, Carrying the Fire:
The G level is getting noticeable now as the first-stage fuel tanks are nearly empty, but the two first-stage engines are still churning away at full thrust. “Staging” (the shutdown of the empty first stage, separation from it, and ignition of the second-stage engine) nears, as the clock approaches two and a half minutes and the G meter creeps up over 5.
Staging is a shock. Too many things happen too swiftly for the brain to render a verdict. The eye barely has time to register catastrophe and rescue: the G load abruptly ceases, and I feel myself flying forward against restraining straps. The window is instantaneously full of reds and yellows and bright particles and whizzing pieces of debris, and then, as quickly as chaos has come, it evaporates, leaving black sky and quiet ride as the second stage hums serenely along.
On the ground Pat watches her TV screen and thinks that the vehicle has exploded. She is right. An instant after the two stages separated, the first-stage oxidizer tank ruptured explosively, spraying debris in all directions with dramatic, if harmless, visual effect. Back in the cockpit we have no time to discuss the matter. John, up for his second time on a Titan, knows this one is different, but not me—I luxuriate in my ignorance and begin to enjoy this ride.
We are now far above any aerodynamic disturbances, and are in fact “in space,” except that we don’t yet have the speed to keep us up here. If the engine quits now, we will ignominiously fall back down into the ocean. But the speed is coming, and the G forces herald its approach, as we build up past 5 and 6. At 7 Gs the discomfort begins, with a giant hand pushing hard against my chest, but it doesn’t last more than a few seconds, because we have arrived.
Precisely on schedule the second-stage engine shuts down (SECO); we separate from the spent Titan and check our velocity. We are a paltry twenty miles per hour slow and we immediately correct for it by using our own thrusters to make up the difference.
Once in orbit:
John and I have our check lists out now, and we swiftly run through the routine we have practiced so many times in the simulator, converting our Gemini from a passive payload to an active, orbiting spacecraft. We must hurry, because in seven minutes we will be in total darkness and the first night is jam-packed with star sightings to use in our orbit determination (Module VI) calculations.
The test pilot in me winces at the necessity to rush at this stage of the game: here we are with a brand-new machine airborne for the first time and we don’t even have time to make sure it is operating properly. Everything is rush—rush—rush to get ready for Module VI.
The tourist in me is equally outraged, for outside my tiny window is the most glorious spectacle of sea and sky I have ever witnessed, and I have no time for it. I press my nose briefly against the glass, but John—half joking, half serious—allows me only a few seconds before ordering me back to work.
Inside the cockpit I get my first manifestation of weightlessness: tiny bits of debris, washers, screws, pieces of potting compound, dirt particles—a miniature armada—are floating aimlessly about. In an hour or so they will be gone, sucked into the inlet screen of the ventilation system, but for the time being they are an amusing oddity as well as a sober reminder that this machine has been assembled by fallible hands which drop things which find their way into inaccessible and possibly dangerous crevices.
My body doesn’t feel much different now that it is finally weightless. A slight feeling of fullness in my head, and a tendency for relaxed arms to float up in front of my face, praying-mantis style. That’s about all, confined as I am inside the tiny cockpit.
A while later, Michael would become the fourth person and third American to conduct an EVA, and the first to do so twice. Both of his spacewalks were a bit dicey, and taught us great lessons about working up there.
PPS - The mission also set an altitude record (475mi), which was broken by Pete Conrad and Dick Gordon on Gemini XI (850mi) in September. Of course, Artemis II shattered all records by going 252,756 miles from Earth, besting the mark of 248,655 miles reached by ill-fated Apollo 13.
What do we call this strange region between earth and moon? Cislunar space is the most common term, but that doesn’t say much. Is it day or night? Since we humans generally define night as that time when our planet is between our eyes and the sun, I suppose this must be considered constant daytime, but it sure looks like night out of several of my windows.
My body ignores all these considerations and stubbornly clings to the twenty-four-hour cycle it has known for thirty-eight years. This circadian rhythm will make me drowsy at the same time my family in Houston becomes drowsy, in the late evening, and alert again as the sun rises above the Houston horizon. My wristwatch knows best, or at least better than my eyes do. ...
[D]uring the flight of Apollo 8, my five-year-old son had one, and only one, specific question: who was driving? Was it his friend Mr. Borman? One night when it was quiet in Mission Control I relayed this concern of his to the spacecraft, and Bill Anders promptly replied that no, not Borman, but Isaac Newton was driving.
A truer or more concise description of flying between earth and moon is not possible. The sun is pulling us, the earth is pulling us, the moon is pulling us, just as Newton predicted they would. Our path bends from its initial direction and velocity after TLI in response to these three magnets. Up until now the earth’s influence has been dominant, but by late tomorrow the moon will take over and our speed will begin to increase again.
In the meantime, we have to correct our course slightly, as we have slowly been drifting off since TLI. For the three brief seconds of service module engine firing, Mike Collins will be driving instead of Sir Isaac Newton. Three seconds’ worth! I wonder at the precision of this journey, which people keep comparing with Columbus’s.
I recall that as his crew grew more and more restless, with no land in sight, and as the pressure to turn back increased, Columbus is supposed to have doctored the daily log to show that the Niña really hadn’t traveled all that far, and therefore it was reasonable still to be out of sight of land. Imagine my trying to doctor our flight plan, in case the moon proved to be more than a three-day journey. What would I say to the Houston computers?
Too bad he didn't have an iPhone - with compute power a few orders of magnitude greater than Apollo's guidance systems - to play games and take pictures along the way.
Pure rains, awaited women, The face you wipe off —Of glass devoted to anguish— Is the face of a rebel; The other, the happy man's window, Shivers before the log fire.
I love you twin mysteries, I feel you both; I have pain and I'm buoyant.
It’s a clear day, we can see that, and we are told that it’s hot already with little breeze—a scorcher in the making. Last night the Saturn V looked very graceful, suspended by a cross fire of searchlights which made it sparkle like a delicate opal and silver necklace against the black sky.
Today it is a machine again, solid and businesslike, and big. Over three times as tall as a Gemini-Titan, taller than a football field set on end, as tall as the largest redwood, it is truly a monster. It is parked next to a huge steel scaffold known as the launch umbilical tower, which is designed to hold the rocket and nurture it until the final second. The two partners make quite a contrast, the rocket sleek and poised and full of promise, the tower old, gnarled, ungainly, and going nowhere.
We park at the base of the tower and clamber out. The first elevator is waiting for us with its doors already open. Something seems wrong, and suddenly I realize what it is. The place is deserted! Every other time I have been to the launch pad it has been a beehive of activity, with workmen shouting at each other, equipment being hoisted by crane, and all the other vital signs common to a big construction site. Now it seems as if some dread epidemic has killed all but those protected by pressure suits, except there are no corpses and Joe Schmitt still looks healthy. Perhaps it is simply a case of the air-raid siren having sounded and left the city deserted.
As the four of us ascend, I feel that more than the elevator door has clanged shut behind me. I recall that there are one million visitors here to watch the launch, but I feel closer to the moon than to them. This elevator ride, this first vertical nudge, has marked the beginning of Apollo 11, for we cannot touch the earth any longer. I am treated to one more view, however, one last bit of schizophrenia as I stand on a narrow walkway 320 feet up, ready to board Columbia.
On my left is an unimpeded view of the beach below, unmarred by human totems; on my right the most colossal pile of machinery ever assembled. If I cover my right eye, I see the Florida of Ponce de Leon, and beyond it the sea which is mother to us all. I am the original man. If I cover my left eye, I see civilization and technology and the United States of America and a frightening array of wires and metal. I am but one adolescent in an army which has received its marching orders. Neil has entered the spacecraft, and I am next.
Fifty years ago, two nations launched a mission that proved space could bring the world together.
On July 15, 1975, NASA launched the Apollo spacecraft for the Apollo‑Soyuz Test Project — the first international human spaceflight mission. The Apollo and Soyuz crews carried out… pic.twitter.com/mUBrBpkiOc
— NASA's Johnson Space Center (@NASAJohnson) July 15, 2026
I didn't even correct NASA about this happening 51 years ago (somebody else already had).
Because of the unique orbital dynamics, both launches were scheduled to take place in midafternoon local time on Tuesday, July 15. Midafternoon at Baikonur was the middle of the night in Florida, so we actually slept through the Soyuz 19 launch.
Since our wake-up time was ten in the morning, I was already awake when John Young knocked on the door. It was unusual to be on the other end of that little bit of business—the first time since 1962 for me.
Tom and Vance and I had a gentleman’s lunch of steak and eggs with John, Ron Evans, and Jack Lousma. We heard then that Soyuz 19 was safely in orbit and that everything was looking good for us.
We got suited up, got in the truck, and drove out to the pad. I have to admit I felt pretty good walking across the swing arm to the spacecraft … what the hell, it was only thirteen years overdue. I never planned on being the world’s oldest rookie astronaut, but I wasn’t going to complain.
We strapped in, Tom in the left couch, Vance in the middle, me on the right. The only hiccup in the countdown was an umbilical that got hung up. We didn’t want to have to stand down and recycle for a launch a couple of days later, because Soyuz 19 would have to come home. (That’s what that backup Soyuz was doing on the pad.)
The umbilical problem cleared, and right on time we lit up and took off.
I’d debriefed every Gemini and Apollo crew, so I wasn’t surprised by much that happened. The noise at liftoff was greater than I imagined it … we had eight engines running back there, and they got even louder as we moved through Max Q, then things began to smooth out.
Whoppo! Shutdown was pretty abrupt. You went from being pushed back in your couch to hanging in your straps. We were in zero-G...
The first order of business was to move the CSM away from the S-IVB stack, turn around, and come back for the docking module. Tom did the flying and did it perfectly. Then we got out of our suits and got down to work.
Glad he finally got up there. Not bad for an old man...
