JW, if you keep spouting ignorant faux-history like this, you continue to hurt the promotion of your opinions.

"But in December, 1967, the first black astronaut to be selected augered into the ground in his F-104. I'm sorry that I forgot the gentleman's name. What if he avoided that terrible fate in that month and year? Would LBJ have put him on the Apollo 8 crew? LBJ had the authority."

Bob Lawrence was training another AF pilot in simulating space-shuttle-type dead-stick lifting-body landings, in an F-104, and the other pilot had the stick when the a/c dragged its tail and then rolled. The other pilot's ejection threw him upward and he survived; Lawrence's, a few milliseconds later, did not, and he did not. He did NOT 'augur in'

Since he was in the MOL program, he never trained for Apollo. But had he lived, he would have transferred with the other younger MOL astronauts to NASA in mid-1969 when MOL was cancelled, and would have been cadre for the earliest shuttle missions, then later NASA duties. He was the kind of man who could have followed the path of surviving MOL pilots such as Dick Truly, who became NASA Administrator.

In 1997 I fought the campaign to get his name on the astronaut memorial at the Kennedy Space Center, which wasn't recognizing non-NASA astronauts until I made a fuss.

JW, how many other of your core opinions are shaped by such sloppy non-historical 'memories'?