San Antonio Summer '64.

Rising on columns of fire, rockets launched to the moon – and I who'd wished to work with astronauts, am assigned instead to weigh SAC bomber crew immersed in water – measure " lean body mass, " wondered what difference a paunch on a pilot would make sitting in a B52. Silent— eyes hidden behind red goggles, they swaggered in their muscled nakedness into my lab. Dark-adapted to their cockpits, ready day or night, airborne at the President's command – fly over the pole, drop hydrogen bombs – mutual assured destruction. MAD it was called. Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; internally peer reviewed.