The USAF Aerospace Research Pilot School at Muroc, now Edwards air force base, which he ran from 1962, offered a state-of-the-art simulator that covered every stage of a space flight, from take-off to landing. Applicants swarmed in, and a bare 1% made it, since even fine grades on paper cut little ice with him. Astronauts, like pilots, had to know the machinery they were riding in, how to fix it and how to get back safely, not rely on some bunch of engineers. Like him, they basically had to be mechanics. Over the years he became well-known, but it was an intermittent sort of fame. After the war he was celebrated as West Virginia's leading ace. After breaking Mach in 1947, hardly a month passed without some magazine running an article about him.
穆洛克的美國空軍航空航天研究飛行員學校,現在是愛德華茲空軍基地,他從1962年開始經營,提供了一個最先進的模擬器,涵蓋了太空飛行的每個階段,從起飛到著陸。申請者蜂擁而至,只有1%的人通過了考試,因為即使是在紙上取得好成績,他也不例外。宇航員和飛行員一樣,必須知道他們乘坐的機器,如何修理,如何安全返回,而不是依靠一些工程師。和他一樣,他們基本上都是機械師。多年來,他名聲大噪,但這只是一種斷斷續續的名聲。戰后他被譽為西弗吉尼亞州的頭號王牌。在1947年突破馬赫數之后,幾乎一個月過去了,就有雜志刊登了一篇關于他的文章。
In the 1960s, when he was running the research-pilot school, he once did 163 talks in a year. He was a draw at any air show and at the Indy 500, where several times he opened proceedings in the pace car, gunning it with joy. Still, people didn't match the name to the face, he thought, until he did the acDelco car-parts commercial on TV; and then when, in 1983, his Mach exploits appeared on cinema screens in “The Right Stuff”, the film of Tom Wolfe's book about the band of pilots. He had helped on the book, going through crash reports, which Wolfe kept getting wrong. As for the film, it was just entertainment, pretty much fiction, from Sam Shepard's dark handsome face to all those blue skies outside the windows. So when he was asked, as he was annoyingly often, whether he had the right stuff, as a test pilot and generally, he gave a downto-earth answer. Rather than being the most righteous, with the moxie, the reflexes, the experience, the coolness, to pull it back in the last yawning moment, as Wolfe wrote, he just knew all about his planes, and had worked his tail off learning it. A mechanic's answer which, as ever, hit the nail on the head.
上世紀60年代,他在管理研究試點學校時,曾在一年內做了163次演講。他在任何航展和印地500都是平手,很多次他都在這個賽場上宣布比賽開始,賽車隨即飛奔而出。他想,直到他在電視上做了acDelco汽車零件廣告,人們才把這個名字和臉配起來;然后在1983年,他的馬赫戰績出現在電影屏幕“正確的東西”上,電影講述的是沃爾夫關于一群飛行員的書。他幫助寫了這本書,翻閱了事故報告,沃爾夫不斷地出錯。至于這部電影,從山姆·謝潑德那張黝黑英俊的臉到窗外那些蔚藍的天空,簡直就是娛樂,簡直就是虛構。所以當他被問到,作為一名試飛員,他是否擁有合適的東西時,總的來說,他給出了一個樸實的回答。與其成為最正直的人,還不如用魔咒,反應,經驗,冷靜,在最后一個打哈欠的時刻把它拉回來,就像沃爾夫寫的,他對他的飛機了如指掌,而且是竭盡全力地學的。一個機械師的回答,一如往常,一針見血。
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