Back before Apollo 15 I met someone who had a friend at the space center in Houston. I wrote him, Ron was his name, and asked for various odds and ends regarding Apollo. What I would get in the mail would lead to a lifetime of collecting, and sacrifice of anything that appeared to be the quaint notion of “savings.” Apollo 15’s “flight plan” Ron had sent me a copy of Apollo 15’s “flight plan” and a copy of the Apollo Operations Handbook. I had...

On this, the 46th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, take note of the following space oddity: For all of the beautiful photos from man’s first walk on the moon, interestingly enough there exists but a single still photo of Neil Armstrong on his historic walk. One of his duties was to take photos while Buzz Aldrin set out the experiments. Armstrong of course, is visible in the relatively poor television from the lunar surface, in...

I grew up with space. I grew up learning and memorizing the names of each of the astronauts, their histories, flights and records, much in the same way other kids learned batting averages, home run counts, saves and ERAs about their favorite baseball players. Gemini 7, 14 days in space (14!), Gemini 8, first in flight abort, Gemini 4, first US spacewalk, and on and on. Outside of Christmas or my birthday, launch day for Gemini-this or...

One of most fond memories of my dad were on my inauguration into teen-hood, my 13th birthday, in February 1969.  I don’t recall any of my gifts save for one. I opened up a card from dad, and it was a “ticket” to go out to Florida and see an Apollo launch. I had to choose one of two. The first was the May Apollo 10 mission, when dad was going back to Florida on business. He was planning on stopping by at the Cape and seeing the Apollo 10 launch...