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Commander Pete Conrad flew on Gemini 5 in 1965, and as command pilot on Gemini 11 in 1966. Command Module Pilot Richard F. Gordon Jr. flew with Conrad on Gemini 11. Originally, Conrad’s Lunar Module pilot was Clifton C. Williams Jr. , who was killed in October 1967 when the T-38 he was flying crashed near Tallahassee. When forming his crew, Conrad had wanted Alan L. Bean, a former student of his at the United States Naval Test Pilot School at Patuxent River NAS, Maryland, but had been told by Director of Flight Crew Operations Deke Slayton that Bean was unavailable due to an assignment to the Apollo Applications Program. After Williams’s death, Conrad asked for Bean again, and this time Slayton yielded.


Aside from the monthly phases of the moon, there is also a daily lunar effect on fish feeding habits. Moonrise and moonset appear to be very good times to go fishing, if other factors like the weather are cooperative. Studies show that fish are more active 90 minutes before and after either the moonrise or moonset. Given this, you now know when is a good time to go fishing, provided it fits your schedule! But small moons like Methone are usually geologically inactive and bereft of an atmosphere. Therefore, they are usually unable to smooth away the scars. Dr. Peter Thomas of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, explained it this way in the May 17, 2013 New Scientist: "When we look at objects less than 200 kilometers in radius, they are all like potatoes. They have lumps, grooves, craters." This makes Methone's smooth surface a mystery. Dr. Thomas is a Cassini team member. Makemake is a classical KBO. This means that its orbit is situated far enough away from Neptune to remain in a stable stage over the entire age of our more than 4 billion year old Solar System. Classical KBOs have perihelia that carry them far from the Sun, and they are also peacefully free from Neptune's perturbing influence. Such objects show relatively low eccentricities and circle our Star in a way that is similar to that of the major planets. However, Makemake is a member of what is referred to as a "dynamically hot" class of classical KBOs, which instead display a high inclination when compared to other classical KBOs.