......Thunderbirds are go.......

Another restful day....a lie in....a long hot shower...breakfast....and then I noticed that one of my favourite films was on tv......The Right Stuff...the story of the breaking of the sound barrier, the start of the US space programme and the Mercury 7 astronauts.

Did you know the sons in the puppet tv series Thunderbirds were named after 5 of the Mercury 7?
Alan Shepard
Virgil "Gus" Grissom
John Glenn
Scott Carpenter
Gordon Cooper
the other two astronauts presumably had names that didn't suit the "Swinging 60's"
Deke Slayton
Wally Schirra

Although John Glenn is/was arguably the most famous of the seven being the first US astronaut to orbit the Earth, the John Tracey character in Thunderbirds wasn't popular and rarely made an appearance being largely confined to Thunderbird 5, the Space Station.

I visited the Thunderbirds web site to see if there was any explanation for the unpopularity of John Tracey or why Deke and Wally were omitted...but there was nothing....but there is an error...the website claims that the characters were named after the first 5 Americans to go into space....but Gordon Cooper was the 7th and last Mercury astronaut to go up, completing 23 orbits.....so it's the first 4 and the 7th...not the first 5!

Now I know what you're thinking...."Why is he banging on about astronauts and Thunderbirds?"

Well this evening I had to do a rescue mission myself....just before 6.00 p.m. the S & H phoned....to say that he had locked himself and Charlie out of the house.....and YH is at work until 10.00. So I "flew" over there with our keys to let them both in.....good job it wasn't raining!

If there's anything else you want to know about the US or Russian space programmes just drop me a line....I can bore for England on that subject!

Das vidanya moy padruga.