A Couple of Short Stories

First, the cool story

SpaceX Releases New Video from IFT-4

SpaceX released a new video today, showing the final moments of the Super Heavy booster's mission, slowing to nearly zero, vertical over the Gulf, then touching down, shutting down the last running engines and tipping over. 

This video from The Launch Pad isn't narrated but shows the landing. If you want some narration, a much longer version is offered by TheSpaceBucket. 

Now, the rougher story

Apollo 8 LM pilot dies in plane crash

Apollo 8 astronaut William Anders, 90, died in a firey plane crash over Puget Sound, Washington on Friday.

At the time of the airplane crash, Anders was piloting his vintage Beechcraft T-34 Mentor – a single-engine, propeller-driven aircraft primarily used for flight training during the 1950s by the United States Air Force and U.S. Navy.

The details of the crash were confirmed by his son, Greg Anders. 

"The family is devastated," said Greg Anders. "He was a great pilot. He will be missed."

"He traveled to the threshold of the moon and helped all of us see something else: ourselves. He embodied the lessons and the purpose of exploration. We will miss him," said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson in a statement.

Anders was a member of the astronaut corps selected in 1963, and while he trained for and was a backup crew member to a Gemini mission, alongside Neil Armstrong on the backup crew for Gemini 11, his first flight was Apollo 8 a particularly noteworthy mission. It was the first Saturn V mission, it was the program's (and America's) first mission to orbit the moon.  Which made the crew of Apollo 8: Jim Lovell, Frank Borman and Bill Anders the first humans to ever see the far side of the moon - at all, let alone up close. 

Anders graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis with a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering in 1955. He was then commissioned as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force, where he underwent flight training, in part, on the T-34 Mentor. He earned his wings in 1956 and served as a fighter pilot with the 84th Fighter-Interceptor Squadron at Hamilton Air Force Base in California and the 57th Fighter-Interceptor Squadron in Iceland.
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Feeling his chances of walking the moon were low, Anders left NASA in 1969 to become the executive secretary of the National Aeronautics and Space Council. In 1973, he was appointed to the five-member Atomic Energy Commission, where he led all nuclear and non-nuclear power research and development. He was also named the U.S. chairman of the technology exchange program for nuclear fission and fusion power with the Soviet Union.

With the loss of Frank Borman last November, and Bill Anders now, Jim Lovell is the only surviving member of the Apollo 8 crew.

Bill Anders 1964 photo, holding models of the Gemini capsule and the Agena target vehicle that the Gemini crews would eventually use to learn the docking skills necessary for the Apollo program. NASA photo.