posted 01-29-2002 09:57 PM               

Arriving at the Sheraton North around 8:30pm, I was pleasantly surprised to see Ed Gibson, Gerry Carr, Bill Pogue, Ed Mitchell and Dick Gordon, as well as Guenter Wendt and a few friends having dinner at the hotel restaurant.

The first order of business was catching up with a friend and fellow collector Tracy Kornfeld. He and I had agreed to meet for a late dinner upon my arrival, but I couldn't resist asking him to show me his "toys" first. Tracy is an expert modeler (some of you may be familiar with his infamous autographed Saturn V) and he had brought some of his latest work to share. In addition to a very cool miniature of Ed Mitchell on the Moon, as well as a Gemini and Agena to scale, Tracy had also brought with him an Apollo splashdown diorama which was simply a treat to behold (and be held)!

(Tracy's been kind enough to agree to write an article for collectSPACE about why he builds models and from the early draft I saw while in Houston, I think everyone here is in for a real treat.)

The next morning was the first day of the show. As you may have noticed on the front page of the site, collectSPACE was an exhibitor, in partnership with Countdown Creations and The Space Agency. Tracy lent a hand setting up our racks of space-related apparel, while Scott Bleisath (a name that will soon become very familiar to cS readers) from Countdown unpacked shuttle tile samples, Space Voyagers toys, and "got space?" shirts/pins. Our booth was the last in a line of tables which hosted the astronauts -- which worked great as we had STS-89 pilot Joe Edwards present and signing (unfortunately, his appearance was cut short and he was unable to return on Sunday).

When the doors opened to the public, a good size crowd entered, many flocking towards Guenter and Russ Still, which kept them busy signing copies of "The Unbroken Chain". Though there were lines, the astronauts and other guests took their time to greet each person individually and took as much time as needed to answer questions, chat, and generally get to know each other. (Later during the show, I would have some really great conversations with Dick Gordon as well as the crew of Skylab 3 (SL-4)).

Midway through day one, I departed the show (again with Tracy at my side) for The Space Store, located directly across the street from Space Center Houston on NASA Road One. The Space Store, the first retail location for the similarly named TheSpaceStore.com, had invited me to their grand opening celebration to provide appraisals about space memorabilia brought to the store by patrons. By the time we had arrived -- a few minutes late due to traffic -- a nice size line had formed.

Respecting everyone's privacy, I feel I must share a few of the true gems which emerged from shopping bags and small cases:

- a set of five Spalding golf balls (and original boxes), from a set pulled off the market by Alan Shepard after the company made claims it was the same brand used on the Moon. The balls and accompanying marketing material was nice by itself, but when it was shown that each had been signed by Shepard I knew we might be looking at something special (there was some question to the authenticity of the autographs but I have told the owner I will be back in touch with him when I can do some research).

- from someone very close to the space program (and a collectSPACE reader), we saw crew-autograph plaques used by North American to identify which command module was intended for which flight. A truly one of a kind item -- the owner was in possession of both the Apollo 11 and 12 signs, signed by both complete crews respectively.

- we also saw what must have been the most expensive $100 bill in existence -- or at least we saw a picture of such. Without going into too many personal details, the person who presented this piece was a bank manager who had come across the C-note in a bin of paper money destined for shredding. As she lifted the bill out of the pile, she immediately noticed signatures; in fact it was completely signed by the Mercury 7 and the Next Nine! A very, very, good samaritan, she tracked down who the bill had been inscribed to and returned it -- apparently it was stolen by the original recipient's cleaning crew and then spent!

After a few hours of appraisals, and after partaking in some surprisingly tasty bread pudding packaged for the International Space Station (thanks Dayna!) we made our way back to the hotel just in time to attend the last few minutes of the Autograph show.

I guess I should take this opportunity to say how great it was to meet the fellow collectors and collectSPACE readers who either stopped by at the show or at the Space Store! I love the Internet and the communications it enables, but there's something to be said for matching a face to a screen name.

One such encounter was with Francois "music_space" Guay. Francois, in addition to being a recent but avid collector of manuscripts and navigation tools, has also been touring these last couple of years with Cirque du Soliel. A cello player and violinist, Francois was very kind to invite me to the Saturday evening performance, arrange for a great seat and afterwards take me on a tour of the back-"tent".

If you have never seen Cirque, or if you have not seen their latest show Dralion, don't walk but run to get tickets! Its an amazingly funny and breathtaking -- a real treat for all the senses (including the ears, with thanks in part to Francois!).

Sunday at the show was a bit slow (business wise) but offered some great opportunities to talk with the astronauts and other show guests. Besides the astronauts, I was pleasantly surprised to find Virginia Hey (a.k.a. Xahn from Farscape) in attendance. I am a fan of the SciFi Channel show and at first didn't realize who I was looking at (on the show, she is bald and blue -- obviously not the case in real life!).

With Tracy, I had a few opportunities to ask the astronauts about questions either posed here or in some of the discussion groups elsewhere. Two that stay fresh in mind now were both asked of Dick Gordon:

Q: Why on Apollo 9 was the helmet red?
A: Only Dave Scott's was red and he may have done that himself. Why? Ask him. (Kim, are you reading this?)

Q: How did you know to look out of the window to witness the eclipse on the way home from the Moon?
A: It was in the flight plan. (Which by happenstance, a fellow collector had brought with him and which Gordon flipped through to find the exact passage. If memory serves me correctly, it was marked in Rev. A at 241 hours.)

With Sunday's activities coming to a close, Scott and I packed up the booth and bid farewell to the astronauts. Let me publicly thank Nolan Sims and Steve Hankow for the invite and for seeing to our needs throughout the show. Thanks guys!

[continued in Part 2: Shuttles, stations, and simulators]