As Will Rogers said, "It ain't what you don't know that makes you look like a fool, it's what you DO know what ain't so."

Gordo told wild stories to please his audiences, the gracious gentleman he was. None of these stories ever checked out with other witnesses, available documentation, spaceflight principles, or common sense -- but so what?

I cut a lot of slack for anybody who puts his fanny on top of an Atlas missile. "Pilot stories" are a special branch of 'urban legends' -- but they are NOT meant to be accepted as adamantine versimilitude.

Unfortunately, other people with your attitude -- he's an astronaut, therefore I unquestioningly trust everything he says -- poured millions of dollars into cockamamie investment schemes he championed in the 1970's and 1980's and 1990's, and lost it all (he did too -- he was sincere, if a poor judge of business opportunities).

He wrote that he saved the space shuttle program from a fatal design flaw by relaying a telepathic warning from space aliens. He wrote that. You believe it? Gimme a break.

You can find these negative assessments on the internet -- just google his name and my name togther! <grin>

Jim Oberg