APOLLING WAY TO GO
Astronaut Thomas P. Stafford has touched the stars aged 93. He was the last survivor of Apollo 10, a mission in which he and Gene Cernan rode a Lunar Module within nine miles of the Moon’s surface, an inching ever-so-closer to landing on the Moon that Neil Armstrong fulfilled two months later. As the space race gave way to space diplomacy, he learned Russian and kicked up a friendship with Alexei Leonov among other cosmonauts. Stafford’s death now comes on the 59th anniversary of Leonov performing the first spacewalk. After being in the ICU in late 2023, he enjoyed a cult status this DDP, with pickers including Bennington & Speight’s Aerial Silk Workshop, La Faucheuse, and both space teams (with Decaying Orbit-uaries opting for the joker).
Thomas P. Stafford
17 September 1930 – 18 March 2024, aged 93
7 TEAMS (💀💀💀💀💀 5 POINTS, 🃏 (x1) 10 POINTS)