One wonderful day I had a very long chat with Frank Borman. He told me that the only terrible thing about going to the moon is that there is nothing ever again that exciting. He reminded me that astronauts are strictly adrenaline junkies.
He also said that the Saturn V boost phase was pretty terrifying.
It was an absolute MIRACLE those guys made it back down to Earth every time they did!
Yeah, I can see the ‘adrenaline junkies’ component to all of that.
I was stationed in Germany in 1986 when we lost ‘Challenger.’ We had been in the field, so didn’t know of it until about a week after it happened. It was like a punch to the gut. :(
For Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo, they were all fighter pilots.