posted 12-05-2003 05:00 PM               

Part of the reason for this was the encouragement given me by my Aunt Rosemary who faithfully provided me with a steady stream of news clippings of space articles well into the first shuttle missions. Many of these I have preserved in a scrapbook with a 12 year old's total disregard for archival preservation. These are my first and still precious pieces of space memorabilia.

I just learned that this great lady has passed away, and considering the happy part of my life that is my space hobby, I thought I would thank her here.

posted 12-05-2003 05:09 PM               

I attribute that to my late mother, and father. They managed to wake me to watch Neil Armstrong walk on the moon.

The first moonwalk took place at about 4/5 a.m. in the UK, so as a young child I was grateful to them for waking me to see man first steps on another heavenly body.

My interest has always stayed with me, and meeting Neil Armstrong in Dublin about two week ago..just brought it back to me.

posted 12-05-2003 06:52 PM               

Secondly to my second grade teacher - Miss Murphy at Adams School in Wichita. She rounded up space articles out of the upper grades' Weekly Readers and let me take her "NASA Facts" brochures home to read!

posted 12-05-2003 07:12 PM               

Had he not been Jewish, he would have become an astronomer — a choice that was not available to him while he was being schooled. Still, he ground his own telescope mirrors in his mother's kitchen and carried that passion for astronomy throughout his entire life. As a child, polio claimed his sight in one eye, which later stood in the way of his desire to be a pilot during WWII, so instead he taught pilots to fly using Link trainers.

He accompanied me on frequent trips to the Hayden Planetarium in New York, gifted me with my first telescope, arranged with my grandmother to take me to the National Air and Space Museum for the first time, and enrolled the two of us in a private colloquium at Cornell with the late Carl Sagan.

posted 12-05-2003 08:51 PM               

My magnet to space was my uncle Milton. Milton worked for various NASA contractors in the 1960's, including Martin-Marrietta as an engineering rep at the Cape (Mercury & Gemini systems engineering) and Grumman Aircraft Corporation in Beth Page, New York where he worked with Tom Kelly's team "pushing out the drawings"). Mr. Kelly wrote a very long, sincere inscription about my uncle in my copy of his book "Moon Lander" shortly before he died. I was trying to tell someone about it recently and got all choked up.

My uncle once explained obital mechanics and rendezvous concepts to me using a salt and pepper shaker. I was only about 10 years old at the time but it made perfect sense. He even arranged a tour in a McDonnell helicopter of the Cape Kennedy launch facility in December 1965. I remembering flying very, very close to (I believe) the Gemini 6 stack while it was on the pad!

I was with my uncle in Sepulveda, California on July 20, 1969 (he was working on the L-1011 with Lockheed at the time) as we watched Neil Armstrong take those first steps on the moon. I'd never seen him cry in my whole life, but he did that night.

During those years, I received many large brown envelopes packed with NASA 8 X 10 photos along with various NASA booklets and sometimes post cards. He had some great stories about working with some of the early astronauts, like Al Shepard's "icy cone of silence" when he was being aloof or Gus Grissom taking a piece of chalk and drawing exactly where he thought the window should be on the Mercury spacecraft (poor, startled engineers!), and also trying to stay out of the way of those speeding Corvettes the astronauts drove all around the Cape!

posted 12-06-2003 09:46 PM            

My mother pointed out the passage of Sputnik 2 across the night sky when I was (barely) 3 years old.

My father helped me cut photographs and articles out of the newspapers when Yuri Gagarin and Alan Shepard went into space. (I still have the cuttings).

I trusted my father to wake me up in the early hours of Monday 21st July, 1969 to watch a certain live TV broadcast, and he didn't let me down, even though we had all just arrived back home from our summer holidays and were all very tired.

posted 12-07-2003 02:57 AM               

I did see it, but I sure don't remember it. I do remember some of the later landings when I was a little older. Whenver my mom bought me a new coat, shoes or boots I always refuse to wear them.

She then came up with the bright idea of calling the new clothing "moon boots or moon coat" I would then wear anything as long as she put the word "Moon" in front of it! (I was an odd kid.)

My interest in that stuff never quit since then. I have several bookshelves full of books all on the moon landings, a wall full of autographs, and models hanging from my ceilings.

posted 12-07-2003 09:15 AM               

My sixth grade science teacher Mr. Moscato, who used to allow me to give presentations to the class on every mission instead of himself doing it because he knew of my intense interest.

My brother, who gave me the Revell Gemini model for my graduation for grammar school in 1967 (and, yes!! I still have it to this day on a prominent shelf in my space room) and he, by the way today is the VP of design for Veridian and worked closely with Dr. Joe Allen and now Guion Bluford.

And lastly to my Mom who used to let me "be sick" during all the Gemini and Apollo missions to stay home and tape all the TV coverage on my little reel to reel tape recorder. And who (because she was a large woman) used to walk by while I was taping and pass a little "swamp gas" as it were... laugh, and say "LIFTOFF!!" to make sure it made it to the tape. It really bothered me then, but I would give my right arm to have those tapes back today.

posted 12-07-2003 01:08 PM               

The one person I do remember most of all during the United States first space efforts wasn't a scientist or astronaut, it was newscaster Walter Cronkite. His interest in our manned missions also fueled my own insationable desire to watch all the televised space flights I could at an early age.

posted 12-07-2003 03:11 PM               

Leo Enright lead me through the early flights of the space shuttle his enthusiasm and professionalism came through in every single report. Beginning in late 1983, I discovered VOA and what a goldmine that was.

I remember the VOA's "Morning Program" interviews, live launches, landings, previews of upcoming missions all glued together by that great wordsmith Alan Silverman.

They were my Walter Cronkites. I had the opportunity to meet Leo last year, but would dearly love to know what happened to Alan.

As for astronauts, it would have to be the "antics" on STS-5 that humanized astronauts for me. STS-1 and 2 did not speak at all, STS-3 a little, STS-4 nothing, then STS-5 was like a breath of fresh air, especially Joe Allen.

posted 12-07-2003 10:25 PM               

Anyway, a few years later, someone I knew at a summer recreation program had a colour TV, and he invited me over to his place to see the launch of the Apollo part of the Apollo Soyuz program in July 1975. One thing really stuck in my mind -- One of the reporters says something akin to (I Can't remember the exact words) "This will almost certainly be the last launch of a Saturn rocket from Cape Canaveral".

I don't know exactly why, but those words stuck in my head, and I wanted to learn more about the subject. I can still recall the first book I ever checked out about Spaceflight -- "Footprints on the Moon" by John Barbour. I learned about Sputnik, the Mercury 7, and Gemini, and learned about names like Ed White, Gus Grissom, James Lovell, Frank Borman, Alexei Leonov that I had never heard up to then. I then proceeded to read every book on the subject that I could find in any of the local libraries...

posted 12-09-2003 11:50 PM               

Thinking it over, though, certainly my parents at least fed into my interests. As a child, I remember them giving me a Moonscope (that I used a lot) a small planetarium that I used to project stars all over my bedroom and pretend I was in space, books, etc., etc., etc.

I also remember my brother and me with our Steve Canyon helmets on and shooting our ray guns at each other. I had toy robots, rocket ships, you name it. Especially as Christmas approaches, these are vivid memories, even though they are nearly half a century old.

posted 12-11-2003 12:40 AM               

I stayed with her for a week or so early in 1962, when I was 14 years old, and she used to read things out of the newspapers to me at breakfast. She was particularly entranced by the delays to the Mercury flight of John Glenn, and convinced me that when he flew it would be a pivotal moment in history.

The day he flew I called into the newsagents on the way home from school and bought both afternoon papers, which had huge headlines ("He's Home!" and "Glenn Safely Back"). I then began to collect cutting from other newspapers and magazines, and pretty soon I had been propelled into the interest of a lifetime.

When I started working I used to pop into one of those little Red Star bookshops and search through all the Soviet magazines looking for articles and photos about the cosmonauts, much to the horror of my mother. She was convinced that the FBI and CIA would have opened a file on me, and I'd probably never be allowed to travel overseas if they thought I was a Communist sympathiser! (I wasn't - I was just a space nut).

My grandmother also had a pretty hot item - a real portable typewriter. So one day on another visit the two of us sat down together and typed letters from me to all seven Mercury astronauts, c/o Manned Spacecraft Centre, Houston, Texas.

About four months later a letter arrived bearing the NASA logo, and I opened it very carefully. Inside was a signed letter from Gus Grissom which, of course, I still have.

Others arrived later, although some autographs I realised had to be machine manufactured, as the signatures were identical to those on other letters, so I was aware of the dreaded autopen very early on.

I wrote at least twice to each of the early astronauts, and in this way I received signed (sometimes handwritten) letters and photos from Ted Freeman, Elliot See, Charlie Bassett, Ed White, Ed Givens, Roger Chaffee, and C.C. Williams, which is why their later deaths were so personal to me.

I used to hunker down in my bed at night with my little transistor radio to listen to such events as the Gemini 7/6 rendezvous, and I would always try to tape the launches on my little reel-to-reel tape recorder. Much to my brothers' chagrin, I used to plaster the wall around my bed with astronaut photos rather than pop stars like them.

And just like another person in this forum, I used to write off to NASA Public Affairs every few months and ask for any material and photos pertaining to space flight. They never failed me, and those thick, brown envelopes were just manna from heaven.

Today, I still find it difficult to believe that I have met and even socialised with a lot of those heroes from my youth, and despite the tragedies which have peppered the spaceflight effort, it is an interest that has fascinated and sustained me from my youth.

posted 09-02-2011 12:39 AM               

I thought it would be fitting conclusion to the scrapbook to add a clipping of the STS-135 landing provided by their son and daughter-in-law, Phil and Lynn.

Scrapbook monetary value = 0.
Scrapbook sentimental value = priceless.

posted 09-02-2011 08:59 AM               

Apollo was always so interesting and I already knew a bit about space exploration from somewhere, I don't know when or where. Seeing the Saturn V and all the other rockets there was also so amazing.

In addition, they had a nice exhibit on the oncoming Mars Pathfinder mission and seeing the lander mockup looked very interesting. Plus you could drive around Sojourner with a remote control.

I have always read books that were many years beyond my grade level and when were at the gift shop one of the things I got was a children's biography of Neil Armstrong which I read and reread multiple times. When I got done reading it for the first time, Neil Armstrong became my first hero that I had.

So I guess it was my parents, NASA, and by proxy Neil Armstrong. All of them sparked the tinder that was in me into a burning desire to learn more about space exploration.

I've been a space buff and a WWII buff for nearly all my life. Just like every young boy, I wanted to be an astronaut and in 99 shortly after Sojourner was roving around Mars for Halloween I wanted to be the Sojourner rover. So my dad made a Sojourner costume for me. It was a large flat piece cardboard, cut into the shape of the rover, spray painted silver, had six wheels made from plastic bottles wrapped in tinfoil and it was held to me with suspenders. For the Antenna, we made a tinfoil hat with an antenna on top.

Our school always had a costume parade. When I walked into school that day, everyone was confused and I had to tell them what I was. "I'm the Mars rover" I said with a huge grin on my face. When my teacher saw me she said "Oh God David. You are going in the back of the parade line."

posted 09-02-2011 11:28 PM               

My grandfather had a 4th grade education, he worked on B-17's & B-24's in Canada during WW2 and he was a self educated builder/engineer. When the US space program was being formed, he told me this would be mankind's greatest achievement and regardless of the cost, it would be worth every penny.

posted 09-09-2011 04:42 PM               

From the time he was about seven, he was always reading kids' versions of astronaut biographies. I remember picking up and reading a few of them, most especially one about Michael Collins called "The Man who Went to the Far Side of the Moon." When he was about 8, Sally Ride came and did a book signing at a local book store for a children's book she'd written, and I took him out of school to go see her. When he was in third grade, they did a living history program, and he was Neil Armstrong. It's been like that his whole life.

When he was in 6th grade, he had a math project where he had to design his own dream trip, and calculate costs, down to mileage, hotel, meals, etc. His dream trip was the Kennedy Space Center. The next year we had the opportunity to surprise him with his dream trip for Spring Break. It was there that I began to realize that I was not just going there because the kid was interested, I had become interested as well.

For Christmas that year the kid bought me Collins' "Carrying the Fire," and also Chris Kraft's "Flight." He started following this site for Astronaut Appearances (I admit I used to refer to it as "Aubrey's Astronaut Stalker Site") when he was about 12, and our family vacations have often been centered on an astronaut appearance ever since. My husband and older son just tolerate the enthusiasm, but Aubrey (who is now 15) and I have gone to about half a dozen events together, from the Apollo 13 celebrations at the Cosmosphere to Spacefest III last June.

posted 09-09-2011 04:57 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by HistorianMom:
...as any parent can tell you, the teen years can be hard, but no matter how much tension there is, we can usually calm the waters if there is some space-related thing to talk about, some new video to watch...some new appearance to look forward to together.

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