As I watched the video of the first Dragon Crew capsule match orbits and link up with the ISS, I remembered sitting in the theater at Radio City Music Hall watching 2001 with my class down from Newport for a day of New York City, courtesy of the nuns.
I thought we would have something like that in orbit by 2001 because back in in 1974 it seemed to be possible and worth it. I'm not sure the ISS is "worth it" but watching the docking last night was awesome. Of course, there's always OldAFSarge to point out that the searchlights and AAA guns of WWII were synchro driven and did pretty much the same thing almost 80 years ago.....
While he was a radar tech I was not but I remember being told one night by the captain that I could not leave the ship until I figured out and fixed the problem that caused our radar to go from 'True' heading to 'Relative' heading as we entered port that evening. Our radar tech was goofing off on a sister ship sweeping mines in the Persian Gulf so it was left to me and the Ensign Ops Officer to "fix" the radar. While I was forbidden to leave the ship until the radar was fixed I didn't hesitate to head across the pier to our sister ship, Constant and track down their radar tech who, most willingly, came over to trouble shoot our radar problem. "Burnt digital to analog synchro converter", was his answer and showed us the blackened carcass of the converter in our radar control console. "No big deal, I got one I can give you" and that was that.
Guys like me getting hammered to fix radars on the spot or never see home again was not what I expected a mere 12 years after watching 2001. To say I was disappointed is an understatement. Stupid radars....
It was a nice docking though.
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