Other
Scientific paper
Jan 2002
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2002lblf.symp..149h&link_type=abstract
Looking Backward, Looking Forward: Forty Years of US Human Spaceflight Symposium, p. 149-163
Other
Engineers, Expeditions, Human Beings, Scientists, Space Capsules, Ground Support Equipment, Mercury Spacecraft, Moon, Saturn 5 Launch Vehicles, Television Systems
Scientific paper
What a grand day that was when Alan Shepard climbed into his Mercury capsule attached to a Redstone rocket-the rocket which would ultimately grow into the greatest rocket ever built, the Saturn V Moon rocket. When I was a boy in Coalwood, WV, my greatest hero, besides my father and my mother, was Huntsville's Dr. Wernher von Braun. After Sputnik was launched in October 1957, the newspapers we received in our little coal camp were filled with stories of how American scientists and engineers were desperately working to catch up in the space race. It was as if the science fiction I had read all my life was coming true. Gradually, I became fascinated by the whole thing. I read every article I could find about the men who built rockets and launched them, and kept myself pinned to the television set for the latest on what they were doing. Dr. von Braun's name was mentioned often. At night before I went to steep, I thought about what he might be doing at that very moment and imagined that he was down at Huntsville or Cape Canaveral high on a gantry, lying on his back like Michelangelo, working with a wrench on the fuel lines of one of his rockets. I started to think about what an adventure it would be to work for him, helping him to build rockets and launching them into space. For all I knew, a man with that much conviction might even form an expedition into space, like Lewis and Clark. Either way, I wanted to be part of his team.
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