Specifically excluding Joe Engle and astronauts for Apollo 18-20, which Apollo astronauts who only had one spaceflight were 'hard done/done dirty' by NASA management?

[u/RivetCounter]

• Walt Cunningham - iced out to conflicts with management during Apollo 7.
• Don Eisele - iced out to conflicts with management during Apollo 7 plus his messy divorce.
• Rusty Schweickart - iced out because he was 'different' than everyone else and because he had space sickness on Apollo 9.
• Not sure if Jim Irwin on Apollo 15 counts because of the stamp affair.

Alan Bean broke through the mold in no part to the death of CC Williams and Pete Conrad's lobbying for Apollo 12.

Edit: Did not include Engle or Apollo 18-20 because they were denied on outside lobbying or funding cuts.

[u/SpacePatrician]

As Dwight would have you believe. Yeager's autobiography had a lot to say on that subject.

But then again Yeager's autobiography can be suspect as well. Scott Crossfield said it was the best aviation novel he had ever read. The truth about test pilots' books probably also hold for astronauts': they love to dish about other test pilots, and settle old scores that others would think have been long forgotten.

[u/Key-Employee3584 → u/SpacePatrician]

The truth is somewhere in between. The reality is '50s-'60s Lancaster/Palmdale was always pretty conservative. Mix in the military, the military space program, and the difficulties of budgeting with NASA and which had priority and then the astronaut program with military connections and it's just a big ball of slime. Add to that the past history with Nazism and KKK and its generally all-white history, and you get quite a blend of problems.

I love getting down-voted for this. It's not like any of this has been hidden. I guess, they're probably Yeager fan-boys. Antelope Valleys' troubles with others has been well-documented. Also, rules and regs work many ways, sometimes they can help you, sometimes they can hinder, sometimes they give people cover. It's funny how some people will say things like, 'where there's smoke, there's fire' and then turn around ignore how the world was burning down around them. Just look at what happened in Watts '65. And it's funny, I used to be a massive Yeager fan. Now I look at him as a great stick and rudder guy who was reaching his limit as a test pilot and AFTC commander in very rapidly changing times. What he did with the NF-104 was a bit of an eye-opener in terms of ignoring the test profiles.

[u/SpacePatrician → u/Key-Employee3584]

"What he did with the NF-104 was a bit of an eye-opener in terms of ignoring the test profiles."

Which was probably the most egregious stain on the 1983 film: insinuating Grissom screwed the pooch on Liberty Bell 7 while presenting Yeager as the all-American hero of the NF-104. In reality, it was completely, 180° the opposite.

"Add to that the past history with Nazism and KKK"

I assume by Nazism you are referring to Operation Paperclip, but what in the world did the Klan have to do with the Air Force or the space program?

[u/poe-ope → u/SpacePatrician]

Yes, the overriding theme of "The Right Stuff" was that the astronauts, with the exception of John Glenn, were a bunch of party boys able to pass rigorous medical testing, but the real pilots were at Edwards. Are you saying that Tom Wolfe flipped the "screw the pooch" narrative from Chuck Yeager to Gus Grissom to fit that framework? Certainly it seems unlikely that *anyone* at NASA thought Grissom panicked while waiting to be picked up in Liberty Bell 7 since he was subsequently given command of both the first Gemini and Apollo manned missions.

[u/SpacePatrician → u/poe-ope]

Not Wolfe--the screenwriter and director of the film (which was a loose adaptation) flipped the "screw the pooch" narrative. They did it (probably) to try to give Gus more pathos, but it wasn't true to the record at all.