{"id":245,"date":"2009-02-05T11:34:03","date_gmt":"2009-02-05T16:34:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress65\/?p=245"},"modified":"2013-02-12T05:56:52","modified_gmt":"2013-02-12T10:56:52","slug":"50-years-ago-space-history-plus-two","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/50-years-ago-space-history-plus-two\/","title":{"rendered":"50 Years Ago in Space History — Plus Two"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fifty years ago today — February 5, 1959 — NASA formed a working group at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory to lay the groundwork for what would become the Apollo lunar exploration program. I find that interesting, since it pre-dates President Kennedy’s challenge to achieve a moon mission by the end of the 60s.<\/p>\n

Two additional tidbits today:<\/p>\n

First, I feel really bad for missing another big space anniversary<\/strong>. Fifteen years ago Tuesday (February 3, 1994), Space Shuttle Discovery<\/em> launched from the Kennedy Space Center on mission STS-60. This was the SPACEHAB-02 and Wake Shield Facility-1 mission, and included astronauts Charles F. Bolden, Kenneth S. Reightler, Jr., N. Jan Davis, Ronald M. Sega, Franklin R. Chang-Diaz, and first Russian cosmonaut to fly aboard the Space Shuttle, Sergei K. Krikalev. <\/p>\n

Why do I feel particularly bad about missing this one?<\/strong> Because I wrote speeches for Ron Sega as my last assignment in the Air Force, when he was the Under Secretary, and he presided over my retirement ceremony<\/a>:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

(Click for larger image)<\/em><\/p>\n

And finally: it takes a long time to print out nearly 600 manuscript pages. I’ve got several copies of the MS about ready to mail out to early readers, but I got those done at the copy shop. I’m printing out another one here at home, and it’s taking a lot longer than I expected. And the printer has started making funny noises …<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"pinterest\"<\/a>\"linkedin\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>by <\/span>\"feather\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fifty years ago today — February 5, 1959 — NASA formed a working group at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory to lay the groundwork for what would become the Apollo lunar exploration program. I find that interesting, since it pre-dates President Kennedy’s challenge to achieve a moon mission by the end \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[11,12],"class_list":["post-245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-space","tag-space-history","tag-space-shuttle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":995,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245\/revisions\/995"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}