Sea between Sydney and New Zealand. You see, you've
got to feel your way down through all that. That's the better part of
flying, the "feel" of it. Automatic controls don't possess that
particular human element. And let me tell you, no matter what they
call it now--space probing, astronautics or what have you--it's still
flying. And it's still men that will have to do it, escape velocity or
no. Like they talk about push-button wars, but they keep training
infantry and basing grand strategy on the infantry penetration tactics
all down through the history of warfare. They call Clausewitz obsolete
today, but they still learn him very thoroughly. I once discussed it
with Bannister. He didn't like Clausewitz. Perhaps because Clausewitz
was a German before they became Nazis. Clausewitz would not look too
kindly on a commander whose concern with a battle precluded his
concern for his men. He valued men very highly. They were the greatest
instrument then. They still are today. That's why I can't really make
too much out of the monkey. I feel pretty rotten about him and all
that. But the monkey up there means a man someplace is still down
here.

[Illustration]

Anyway, after Lynds completed six orbital revolutions, they began the
deceleration and descent. The whole affair, as I said, was very
solidly based on technical determinations of stresses, heat limits,
patterns of glide, and Bannister's absolute conviction that nothing
would let go. The bitter part was that it let go just short of where
Lynds might have made it. He was through the bad part of it, the
primary and secondary decelerations, the stretches where you think if
you don't fry from the heat, the ship will melt apart under you, and
the buffeting in the upper levels when ionospheric resistance really
starts to take hold. And believe me, the buffeting that you know
about, when you approach Mach 1 in an after-burnered machine, is a
piece of cake to the buffeting at Mach 5 in a rocket when you hit the
atmosphere, any level of atmosphere. The meteorites that strike our
atmosphere don't just burn up, we know that now. They also get knocked
to bits. And they're solid iron.

Lynds was about seventy miles up, his velocity down to a point or two
over Mach 2, in level flight heading east over the south Atlantic.
From about that altitude, manual controls are essential, not just to
make one feel better, but because you really need them. The automated
controls did not have an