I am sorry I missed this one and got to it while bidding farewell to Frank Borman.
The year has been full of valuable colleagues astronauts losses. In a sense they are colleagues because they were the team that was trained by a dozen of scientists like me from various disciplines such as Geology, Meteorites, High energy physics, Health experts, astrophysicists such as myself, etc.
During Apollo and Skylab we dealt with all phases of experiments from proposal and design to training and conveyance of results or the Principal Investigators.
Often we used to meet at Houston and Huntsville, they each had a jet for their own use and met just for the day or two.
Among them Mattingly was one distinguished in may ways and he will certainly be missed.
After leaving NASA HQ during Apollo I was a PI for space Shuttle Sortie studies and after 25 years my company Raytheon-Hughes was a fabricator of Electronics for Hubble updates and then also we had occasion to meet some of Shuttle astronauts, not Mattingly as he had retired by then.
So it is painful to see the history makers in space especially human space ventures depart in succession and the least we can do is to salute them for their immense contributions to the spirit of discovery.
Om Shanti
Ravi
(Dr. Ravi Sharma, Ph.D. USA)
NASA Apollo Achievement Award
ISRO Distinguished Service Awards
Former MTS NASA HQ MSEB Apollo time frame
Former Scientific Secretary ISRO HQ
Ontolog Board of Trustees
Particle and Space Physics
Senior Enterprise Architect
SAE Fuel Cell Tech Committee voting member for 20 years.
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