posted 11-16-2015 07:50 PM               

It is with saddened hearts that we share with you the news that Don Black, Gemini White Room Mechanic (Experimental Mechanic) and a long-time friend of ASF has passed away. He was a faithful participant and contributor in ASF's Autograph and Memorabilia Shows and auctions. He will forever be remembered for his work in the space program. Please join us in our condolences to his family and many, many close friends.

A licensed pilot and aircraft mechanic and aircraft-engine technician, he went to work for McDonnell Douglas in the 1960s and moved to Titusville with Louise and their three children.

There, he worked on the Gemini space program from Gemini 6 to Gemini 12 as a spacecraft mechanic. Gemini was between the Mercury program that sent the first American into space and the Apollo program that included the moon landings.

Much of his work was in the White Room, a sterile environment from which astronauts were placed into the capsule for launch.

"Yes, we wore those white bunny suits," he said.

At the end of the Gemini program, Black was assigned to another McDonnell Douglas project in Maryland, working out a way to retrofit the F-4 jet fighter with Rolls Royce engines for the Royal Air Force and Navy.

As he was leaving the Kennedy Space Center again at the beginning of the Apollo program, Black began collecting signatures of people he worked with... Years later, Black said, he auctioned off the autographs in a fundraiser for the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation.

...upon completion of the [F-4] project, Black returned to the Kennedy Space Center to work on the massive Saturn V rockets used to launch the Apollo capsules.