Raising a Glass (to 185 Kilometers)

[beamjockey]

What better way to celebrate the semicentennial of the flight of Freedom 7 than with a toast?

I thank my colleague Roger Zimmermann for pointing out that the toast should be drunk with Tang, beverage of astronauts!


Tang, the powdered orange drink.


Mary Lynn Skirvin Johnson, Bill Higgins, and Todd Johnson toast Mercury Redstone 3.

Happy anniversary, Admiral Shepard, wherever you are.

Comments

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

And, if you have leftover Tang, it's also good for cleaning your toilet.

No, that's not a joke.

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

I do have some leftover Tang, but I don't think I'll use it that way.

It tastes like childhood.

[tlunquist.livejournal.com]

My childhood tasted like marshmallows singed by the fire and dropped in the dirt. My recollection of Tang was that it wasn't that good.

[purpleranger.livejournal.com]

And I have an idea for a drink -- call it a "Zero-G Screwdriver." Tang and Vodka, or course.

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

I encountered this joke in the Sixties, probably in the pages of Reader's Digest.

[purpleranger.livejournal.com]

I don't remember ever reading it anywhere. I just remember thinking -- sometime during the Apollo program -- that Tang and vodka would be how an astronaut would make a screwdriver. Of course, this was after I learned what a regular screwdriver was.

At first, I called it an "astronaut screwdriver," but then I decided that "zero-G screwdriver" sounded better. I've never made one, so I have no idea how this would taste.

[acmespaceship.livejournal.com]

Tang and everclear. No water required. Triangle Fraternity House, Northwestern, late 1970's. Not that I tried it myself, and not that I'd recommend it. They did all survive.

Though Tang and Vodka does have a nice Apollo-Soyuz detente ring to it.

[purpleranger.livejournal.com]

I was basing my recipe on traditional screwdriver -- vodka and orange juice. Is a screwdriver normally served on the rocks or not?

[acmespaceship.livejournal.com]

I have no idea actually what goes into a normal screwdriver. I could search Google but that would be cheating.

[drzarron.livejournal.com]

Also a handful of Tang tossed over red hot coals will make a very impressive fireball.

As to toasting Sheppard, I think I'll stick to his favorite tipple, bourbon.

Hot Jets and Clear Skies.

[purpleranger.livejournal.com]

Do you know if Shepard had a favorite brand of bourbon?

[bigbumble.livejournal.com]

When it comes time to toast Skylab it will have to be Borden's Breakfast Drink.

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

Time for the Shepard Prayer?

[acmespaceship.livejournal.com]

It's always time for the Shepard Prayer. I trust Admiral Shepard is no longer in need of it, but the rest of us are.

[neowolf2.livejournal.com]

That intense yellow-orange color is normally only seen on poison arrow frogs and in some hallucinations.

[charlie-meadows.livejournal.com]

There was a modicum of hoopla on June 16 when Kraft Foods announced that Tang had now attained $1 billion in annual sales worldwide. (However, I still say Strawberry Tang is *not* the True Tang...)


If you'd rather hear Mel Blanc pitch the stuff,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HocSTo7GyGA

Here's how them astronauts do it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWghCdIqedA&feature=related