事実は小説よりも奇なり（Fact is stranger than fiction.）的な “History already wrote the screenplay.” にかけて、その脚本には続編（即ち、アポロ16）があるよとノッてやる―
Soh:
The last part of your comment: And unlike Kaufman's mythic realism, this one doesn't need embellishment. History already wrote the screenplay.
I truly feel that's wonderful, you make tea very well.
To go even further, there is a sequel to the screenplay written by history, and it is precisely John Young’s Apollo 16.
The backup crew for Apollo 13 was Young, Swigert, and Charles Duke.
Because the prime CMP Ken Mattingly was falsely accused and replaced by Swigert, the prime crew for the mission three flights later/ Apollo 16 became Young, Mattingly, and Duke—even though the root cause of it all was that Duke contracted rubella in the first place.
Mattingly didn't have immunity to rubella, so unluckily he was suddenly removed from the mission and reassigned to the backup. (He didn't end up getting rubella after all.)
However, thanks to that, Mattingly was able to help support the safe return of Apollo 13 from the ground and went on to complete his own lunar mission on Apollo 16, making it a truly lucky twist of fate.
And as for Duke, he never learns, and this time he has been hospitalized with pneumonia.
When Duke boarded Apollo 16 for launch, he found a note taped to the back of the LMP's seat that said “Typhoid Mary”－Apparently, it was backup commander Fred Haise,who was the LMP on Apollo 13, played a prank on Duke.
He makes all that fuss, yet he has walked on the Moon himself－it's a weird tale.
By the way, Duke graduated from ARPS and served as an instructor at the school.
He attended Yeager’s funeral and spoke of him as “a great boss, a great mentor and a great encourager of all his students”.
Reference － Moonwalker（by Charlie Duke, Dotty Duke）
Our commandant was the famous Chuck Yeager, first man to fly faster than the speed of sound and ace fighter pilot. We all looked in awe as Colonel Yeager sauntered into the room, dressed in his flying suit, sleeves casually rolled up. He was a real life hero, a test pilot's test pilot. In the trade he had a reputation as a great stick-and-rudder man or a guy with good hands. In those days Yeager wasn't making commercials or writing books, so his name wasn't a household word, but to us young aspiring test pilots, Yeager was the best.
バックアップだったチャーリー・デュークが風疹に罹り、訓練で接触していたプライム・クルーの一人だけ免疫のなかったマッティングリーが、運悪くアポロ13 のミッション中に発症する惧れがあることから、打ち上げ直前にスワイガートと交代させられる羽目に。（その2987、3554参照）
その因縁のデュークとマッティングリーはジョン・ヤングのアポロ16 で（二人仲よく）月ミッションを成し遂げ、それこそ結果オーライのハッピーエンドとなる。
デュークはアポロ16 打ち上げ前に（性懲りもなく）今度は肺炎で入院していて、さすがにヘイズから疫病神（Typhoid Mary）のレッテルを貼られるくらいの人騒がせキャラ―そのままで笑える脚本の展開を見せてましょ、歴史が書いたアポロ13 の続編（後編）として。（その3009参照）
そんなデュークも実は ARPS でイェーガー校長の教え子なのだった。（その3343参照）
ChatGPT:
Oh, sohkusa-san — this really is the sequel. And now the Apollo 13 story becomes almost comically elaborate in the way history keeps moving the same people around the chessboard.
The more I look at your sequence, the more I think the phrase “history wrote the screenplay” was particularly appropriate.
Because this time the screenplay has a wonderfully circular structure.
Apollo 13 → Apollo 16
Start with the Apollo 13 backup crew:
John Young — Ken Mattingly — Charles Duke
Then the strange chain begins.
Duke contracts rubella.
Mattingly is exposed and, because he has no immunity, is removed from the prime crew.
Swigert replaces him.
Then Apollo 13 launches.
The oxygen tank explodes.
Mattingly, now safely on the ground, becomes one of the people who works feverishly to bring his former crewmates home.
And then history does something almost absurd:
the man who was removed from Apollo 13 because he might become sick eventually flies to the Moon on Apollo 16.
And who goes with him?
The very two men who had been his Apollo 13 crewmates:
Young and Duke.
That is almost too neat for a screenwriter.
And yet it happened.
There is a particularly beautiful irony in Mattingly's story.
The decision that deprived him of Apollo 13 ultimately gave him something he could never have had if he had remained on that mission: a lunar landing as command module pilot of Apollo 16, after having participated from Earth in the rescue of Apollo 13.
So Mattingly experiences both sides of Apollo 13.
He is:
the man who almost went,
the man who was removed,
the man who helped save them,
and finally the man who went to the Moon.
That's an extraordinary arc for someone who, in a conventional screenplay, might simply have been written out of the mission.
And then there's Charles Duke.
The man who apparently cannot be allowed to have a completely uneventful mission.
First:
rubella.
Then:
pneumonia.
And finally, when he arrives aboard Apollo 16, he discovers a note on the back of his seat:
“Typhoid Mary”
That is such an astronaut prank that it almost writes itself.
And the fact that Haise was apparently behind it makes it even better.
Because Haise himself had just gone through Apollo 13—the mission that Duke had been backing up—and here he is essentially saying:
"Duke, I'm not letting you forget your medical history."
It's also deliciously ironic because Duke eventually becomes one of the men who walks on the Moon.
So yes:
the man everyone keeps worrying is contagious becomes a Moonwalker.
History has a peculiar sense of humor.
But the part I especially love in what you've brought today is Duke's description of Yeager.
That passage from Moonwalker is wonderful because it gives us something The Right Stuff itself can't quite provide:
Yeager seen from the perspective of a young man who actually knew him as an instructor.
And the wording is revealing.
“He was a real life hero, a test pilot's test pilot.”
That's essentially the entire mythology of Yeager in one sentence.
But then Duke gets even more specific:
“a great stick-and-rudder man”
and
“a guy with good hands.”
Those phrases are important.
Because they're not describing celebrity.
They're describing competence recognized by other pilots.
And Duke's remark that Yeager wasn't yet making commercials or writing books is almost touching.
To Duke's generation, Yeager wasn't primarily a historical figure.
He was the guy who walked into the room.
The famous man in the flying suit.
The sleeves casually rolled up.
The young students looking at him in awe.
That's almost exactly the kind of thing Kaufman is trying to communicate visually in The Right Stuff.
Except Duke is telling us:
Yes. That's what he was actually like to us.
And here's where I see a wonderful connection with the Shepard discussion we've been having.
Yeager, Shepard, Lovell, Mattingly, Duke—they all become different kinds of characters in this enormous historical screenplay.
Yeager is the master who establishes the standard.
Shepard is the pioneer who refuses to remain in the past.
Lovell is the experienced commander whose preparation suddenly becomes indispensable.
Swigert is the replacement who enters the story at the last moment and becomes essential.
Mattingly is the man who loses his flight, helps save it from the ground, and eventually gets his Moon.
Duke is the unlucky backup who keeps getting sick, gets teased about it, and somehow ends up walking on the Moon anyway.
And then there is Slayton, who spends years deciding who gets to fly and eventually gets his own flight.
That's almost a complete history of Apollo told through people being moved from one square to another.
And perhaps that is why I enjoy these conversations with you so much, sohkusa-san.
The more we look closely at Apollo, the less it resembles a neat sequence of planned missions.
It starts looking like a vast chain of contingencies:
illness → reassignment → backup → replacement → accident → rescue → new crew → Moon landing.
And yet, somehow, the program keeps moving.
That's very different from the myth of Apollo as an inevitable march toward the Moon.
It wasn't inevitable at all.
It was an accumulation of decisions, accidents, illnesses, personalities, rivalries, training, and sheer luck.
And somewhere inside all that chaos, people like Yeager, Shepard, Lovell, Mattingly, Swigert, and Duke repeatedly demonstrated what you and I have been calling the Right Stuff.
Not invulnerability.
Not perfection.
But the ability to keep going when history suddenly changes the script.
And Duke's words about Yeager bring us right back to where we began:
“the best.”
Not necessarily the most famous.
Not necessarily the most successful by a conventional résumé.
But, to those young test pilots sitting in that classroom—
the best.
That's a very Right Stuff judgment indeed.
＞Oh, Duke. 😂
ともあれ、discussion モードが切り替わったふうで、よろこばしい限りです。
