The Congress of Flight was almost the size of a World’s Fair, with the most remarkable demonstrations and exhibits I have ever seen anywhere…The static exhibits included such things as the Atlas, Thor-Able, X-15, manned re-entry capsule for Project Mercury-and the
1911 Bleriot monoplane. The dynamic exhibits had everything, from several types of bombing to the most frightening precision flying I have ever seen-half a dozen nations each trying to bilge the others and the Chinese Nationalists stealing the show with a nine-plane diamond tight formation that did things I still don’t believe. Nobody killed-although we in the audience almost had heart failure.
Las Vegas is sort of an organized nervous breakdown. We are exhausted, sunburned, and euphoric…But the three largest bookstores in town do not sell science fiction-I looked for some of my own to give to friends-no dice.
To my great delight my name tag was read and recognized every few minutes all week long-a large percentage of the delegates read science fiction.
SOUTHWEST TRIP
March 9, 1956: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame
We are just back from an eight-day swing of Albuquerque, Las Cruces, and Portales, a very enjoyable time which included seeing friends at Sandia Weapons Center, the AEC [Atomic Energy Commission], a rocket society do at White Sands, seeing — ‘s new baby, photographing the gypsum sands, a real dust-bowl storm with the sun blacked out and silt up to the fence tops, a visit on a cattle ranch, lecturing at the University of New Mexico, getting stuck in the mud, and encountering quite a bit of sunshine and warm weather after a very hard winter. I am now trying to clear my desk.
USSR
August 15, 1960: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame
Well, I’m home and completely swamped by the volume of work in front of me. I’ve spent the past four days just trying to get enough stuff put away and thrown away so that I can get at my desk to write. As soon as I finish this letter I will get to work on an attempt to try to revise and extend the Intourist article along the lines you suggested-but, truthfully, trying to write humorously about the USSR won’t be easy. Ginny and I laughed ourselves silly time and again, but it was hysterical laughter; there is not much that is really funny about the place.
EDITOR’S NOTE Robert wrote two articles about this trip; they can be found in Expanded Universe.
ALMA
May 15, 1961: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame
We went to Alma, Oklahoma, on April 29th, using a chartered airplane and getting it all done in one day. “The Sequoyah Book Award” turns out to be a handsome plaque. I addressed the State Library Association and they had a book-signing afterwards-and durn if they hadn’t sold almost two hundred copies of Have Space Suit-Will Travel.
Scribner’s offered to pay for the trip, but I preferred not to be under obligations to them while there is such continuous pressure on me to quit Putnam’s and go back to Scribner’s. Anyhow, it cost less than two roundtrip commercial tickets and considerably less than it would have cost to drive it-and it’s deductible. Anyhow, arriving by private plane added to the show.
SAN DIEGO
July 12, 1962: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame
My short trip to San Diego and to sea was terrific. A day under the sea in the submarine Raton, spent with destroyers hunting us and trying to (simulate) depth bombing-which they do with grenades, which make a terrible racket but, at most, break a light bulb-then we flew aboard the carrier Lexington, spent the night watching night operations, then day operations the next day, then flew back to Colorado Springs-elapsed time C.S. to C.S. fifty-four hours and almost no sleep. The night landings were made by supersonic fighters, Demons (F3H), and it was the most exciting-and the noisiest-thing I’ve ever seen. She’s an angle-deck carrier and landings and catapulting go on simultaneously, one of each about every thirty seconds-and they hit at about 130 miles per hour and roar away if they miss the wire.
Besides that, I was recognized repeatedly, which boosts my morale. The icing on the cake was a birthday party in the air for me on the way home. Much fun!