Deke Slayton

More mishaps could damage the schedule mission planners were still hoping to fulfill, so contingency arrangements were made.

Deke Slayton, who had been chosen as one of the original Mercury Seven astronauts, was now in a senior role at the Astronaut Office charged with crew selection.

Astronauts had to train as backup crew for a mission three flights before flying their own allocated mission, and setup of spacecraft before launch became the responsibility of the backup crew.

It became customary to take a version of the crew photograph that included the backup astronauts.

So anyway, NASA, the Air Force picked me, and they sent me to NASA.

And then NASA, through a series of process and interviews in the spring of 60s ... six, I guess it was, uh, I got a call from Deke Slayton and said, "Hey, we picked you, and, uh, can you, uh, be here by May, uh, uh, next month?" And I said, "I think so.

Uh, I'll see you there." And so, we picked up and moved our family from Edwards to, uh, Houston, and I started that, uh, started a career, uh, there.

It was a very exciting 10 years.

And John Cernan discusses that in Last Man, his book, because at the time, during Apollo 17, just before he took off, I think it was Black September, it was a terrorist group that said they wanted to kill John Cernan and his family.

So he talks in that book about how they would switch to the medical encrypted channel to speak with his family back on Earth when he wanted to check in with them via Deke Slayton, another astronaut that was doing his position, supporting the mission from the ground.

So they've always had encrypted channels that the military and Capcom or NASA had access to, but the public didn't.

So I think we're building a case here, Darcy, from the films that you've done, not just about the cosmic con, as you say, the people who make grandiose claims about a secret space program.

yeah.

And they were going to have Deke Slayton do it.

It was written by Deke Slayton and Al Shepard.

Okay.

And they were going to have Deke Slayton do the book, but they heard my narration, and Deke Slayton had passed away, so they asked me to do it.

So I read the book for them.

Oh, wow.

And when they saw whose plane this was, the manager was shocked.

This was Deke Slayton's plane.

The manager knew Deke.

I mean, everybody did.

And when Deke's wife got that letter and read its contents, she was so confused.

Because what this airport was claiming Deke did Was literally impossible.

It would turn out there was literally no way Deke Slayton could have been flying his Stinger over the California skies on that day.

Because the storage location that was holding Deke's plane was actually a museum in Nevada.