Comedy Writing Secrets
by Mel Helitzer and Mark Shatz · 14 Sep 2005
thought about just before his first capsule was shot into space, and he said: "I looked around me and suddenly realized that everything had been built by the lowest bidder." Group Differences: Us vs. Them Mocking the beliefs or characteristics of social groups is one of humor's most controversial subjects because it caters to
Amazing Stories of the Space Age
by Rod Pyle · 21 Dec 2016
his two comrades gambled their lives on $32 million of technology, the cost of one of NASA's lunar modules, which had, as always, been built by the lowest bidder.1 Soon the two astronauts would disconnect from the command module, make only the second descent toward the moon's surface ever (Apollo 10 had
Light This Candle: The Life & Times of Alan Shepard--America's First Spaceman
by Neal Thompson · 2 Jan 2004 · 577pp · 171,126 words
the success rate of certain American rockets hovered around an appalling 50 percent. Shepard’s response to such failures: What do you expect from rockets built by the lowest bidder? By mid-1960, as the astronauts passed their first anniversary as a team and the training and traveling routine reached full speed, the seven were
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on cue, I looked at the dials I had to turn on cue, and I thought to myself: My God, just think, this thing was built by the lowest bidder.” The two men cracked up, and Cronkite realized he hadn’t seen that toothy, big-lipped smile in ages. About six months after Victor Poulos
Beyond: Our Future in Space
by Chris Impey · 12 Apr 2015 · 370pp · 97,138 words
exquisite machine, where hundreds of thousands of parts had to work in perfect synchrony (Figure 25). They also were uncomfortably aware that it had been built by the lowest bidder. Rocket technology hasn’t improved much since the 1960s. But there’s a cheaper way to design rockets. Figure 25. The most powerful and highest
Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man's First Journey to the Moon
by Robert Kurson · 2 Apr 2018 · 361pp · 110,905 words
outside. From his vantage point, Lovell couldn’t help but think of the old astronaut joke—How does it feel to sit atop a vehicle built by the lowest bidder? A NASA staffer gave the signal for the astronauts to start loading. Borman went first and, after some maneuvering, settled into the left-hand seat