An unexpected Christmas present

I received a wonderful surprise in the mail today - an autographed and personalized photo of John Glenn! I shouldn't say it was a total surprise, but the timing made for a perfect Christmas present.

After seeing John Glenn at the National Air and Space Museum in November at the lecture for the Apollo 8 crew, and realizing that he was now 87 years old, I thought I had better hurry if I was ever going to get a personalized photo from him. He looked in relatively good health, but at 87, every day is a gift.

Senator Glenn (or "Payload Specialist II Glenn," as they jokingly referred to him at the NASM lecture), is renowned for his generosity in filling every autograph request he gets through the mail. I ordered on eBay a great photo of him being loaded into Friendship 7 on the day of his historic flight. After that photo arrived, I sent the photo, a letter, and a prepaid return envelope to Glenn's suburban Washington DC address. That was the week of Thanksgiving, and I frankly didn't expect a reply for several months.

Today's mail delivery brought my return envelope and the picture, beautifully signed in silver pen and personalized to me with the date of December 22, 2008. It's so incredible that this man still signs autographs - and does it for free. I heard somewhere that even if he wasn't necessary thrilled about signing, he felt it was the least he could do as a representative of the country that he loves and who sent him into space. He is a class act in every respect and a true gentleman.

God bless you, John Glenn, and thanks for a wonderful Christmas present!!

Merry Christmas to "all of you on the good Earth"

On what was the most memorable Christmas Eve of my lifetime, the crew of Apollo 8 orbited the Moon and sent us back live TV from another world.

All of the horrible events of the year were forgotten for that one moment. If your skies were clear that night, you went outside, looked up at the Moon, and marveled that there were actually people up there, so very far away.

The footage from their TV broadcast looks washed out and blurry to modern eyes, accustomed to the clarity of high-def TV. But in 1968, it was amazing to see the Moon from 60 miles up in the comfort of our living room.

The best Christmas gift of all was hearing that Apollo 8's engine firing had been successful, sending them back home again.

It was an audacious mission, one calculated to give America an insurmountable lead in the propaganda of the Cold Ward. However, the success completely transcended nationalism and politics, actually bringing humanity closer together rather than widening the distance between us.

Apollo 8 to the Moon!!

Forty years ago today, the first men to leave the Earth's vicinity were launched aboard a Saturn V rocket.

Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders began this historic journey when we needed it most. Were it not for Apollo 8, I have no doubt that 1968 would have gone down in history as one of the worst years for Americans in modern times. The assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy tore the country apart. There were riots in the streets, and I remember seeing the pillars of smoke rising above Washington DC as many neighborhoods burned. Protests about the Vietnam War and at the Democratic National Convention highlighted how angry Americans were.

Apollo 8 focused our attention on the best that Americans - and mankind - could do. The world took a 6-day time-out and watched three brave men journey a quarter-million miles away from their planet. They saw, as no one had ever seen, how small and fragile our Earth is. And they shared that image with us through their onboard TV camera.

The Christmas season of 1968 will never be forgotten by those who were alive then.

Today's word is ... "frangible"

Frangible items are designed to break into fragments, rather than deforming and remaining a single piece.

The space program makes wide use of frangible nuts and bolts as connectors that hold items together until an exact moment when they have to be separated quickly. This quick separation is accomplished with an explosive charge, referred to as a "pyro" (for pyrotechnic device) or an NSD ("NASA Standard Detonator"). The astronaut (or the computer system) throws a switch to activate a certain sequence; the pyro blows and the frangible nuts and bolts that held the item together shatter, allowing the items to separate.

Examples of this in action would be separating the spent solid rocket boosters from the Space Shuttle, releasing a satellite from the Shuttle's payload bay, or even deploying the spring-loaded solar panels on the MER Mars rovers. The frangible nuts and bolts in the picture above are from the Space Shuttle program.

In my mind, the most famous film depiction of pyros was in 2001: A Space Odyssey, when the explosive bolts were used to blow off the EVA pod's door so that Dave Bowman could quickly enter the emergency airlock.

Gemini VI and VII rendezvous

Gemini VI, commanded by Wally Schirra with Tom Stafford flying as Pilot, was launched on December 15, 1966. In what was perhaps the most significant "space first" of the US to that date, it was the first time two piloted vehicles had successfully rendezvoused in orbit.

The mission of Gemini VI changed substantially from its initial concept. Originally, Gemini VI was to have docked with an Agena target vehicle in October 1966. However, the Agena failed during launch and never reached orbit. The Gemini VI vehicle lacked the fuel cells needed for a long-duration space flight like Gemini VII, but NASA worked out a quick mission that would demonstrate rendezvous capability.

I remember the excitement of seeing the photos from the mission, which quickly became available just after Gemini VI landed the next day. There was no TV from spacecraft at that point, so we couldn't see the event as it happened, and we had to settle for still photos in the newspapers and magazines. It was so cool to see a photo of an actual capsule in orbit. It was the first time the general public had ever seen something like that...our views of spaceflight up to that point had only been launch, recovery, and pictures taken out the window. Now, we got to see the full Gemini spacecraft, with its contrasting black capsule and white adapter sections, and the surprise of the gold foil tendrils snaking out the back of the ship.

These two items from my collection are an access badge to the Gemini VI spacecraft, from the collection of a former ground crew worker at KSC, and a small fragment of the heat shield from Gemini VI.

Challenger on the Moon

Gene Cernan and Jack Schmitt landed "Challenger" in the Moon's Taurus-Littrow valley on December 11, 1972. They spent three days exploring the hills and valley, sending back the clearest TV pictures yet from the surface of the Moon.

On board the LM, like every spacecraft, was the equivalent of a car's "owner's manual," describing all the systems in case something needed troubleshooting when 240,000 miles away from home. This diagram is a page taken from Gene Cernan's actual Flight Data File for the Apollo 17 mission. It went with him to the surface of the Moon, and it is perhaps the prize of my collection. Cernan signed it for me when I met him at the National Air and Space Museum on November 3, 2006. This particular page of the Flight Data File deals with overcoming trouble with the Abort Guidance System (AGS), one of the two navigation systems on the LM.

The Flight Data Files were kept in pouches behind the Commander's station. This photo, taken in the LM after the conclusion of the third and final moonwalk of the mission, shows the astronauts' helmets and space suits piled on the cover of the ascent engine. The pouches on the wall on the right side of the photo contain the Flight Data Files. I get chills every time that I think that I have a page of one of the notebooks inside those pouches, something that went to the Moon and back!

Skylab Rescue Mission (SL-R)

Skylab is considered the least-remembered part of the Apollo program. If people do recall Skylab, it is likely because of the "sky is falling" fears it evoked in 1979 when it was about to re-enter the Earth's atmosphere. Because it was an uncontrolled re-entry, no one knew how much of it would survive re-entry, or even where or when it would come down. I remember "Skylab pools" with people betting on the date it would come back to Earth.

Those who were really paying attention may remember that the entire Skylab project was in serious jeopardy starting 63 seconds after the station's launch, when the meteoroid shield ripped off of the space station and tore off one of the station's two key solar panel wings. The heroic efforts of the first crew to man the station, led by Pete Conrad, led to Skylab becoming habitable and useful for its three long-duration crew stays.

The second crew to visit Skylab, commanded by Al Bean, encountered difficulties with their Apollo spacecraft prior to docking, when one of the four quads of reaction control system (RCS) thrusters on the Service Module developed a leak and had to be shut down. A second RCS quad also developed a leak and also had to be disabled. There was deep concern that the Apollo spacecraft, which the crew would need for return to Earth, could not be controlled adequately with half of the RCS thrusters out of action.

The 1969 movie "Marooned", followed by the 1970 Apollo 13 near-disaster, were still fresh in people's minds. We didn't want to contemplate a crew of astronauts stranded in orbit.

NASA decided to prepare a spacecraft for a potential rescue mission, should it become necessary. A Command Module was adapted to hold five crewmen instead of three. Astronauts Vance Brand and Don Lind were selected as the crew for SL-R, the Skylab Rescue mission. NASA ultimately determined that the Skylab crew would be able to get home safely. Nonetheless, they retained the idea of using a modified ship as a contingency rescue vehicle for the last Skylab crew.

The vehicle was rolled out to the launch pad on December 3, 1973. It was ultimately not needed, so it was rolled back to the Vehicle Assembly Building after the conclusion of the last Skylab mission. This CM became the backup CM for the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP). It is on display in the visitors center at the Kennedy Space Center.

Vance Brand got to fly on the ASTP mission in July 1975. Don Lind wouldn't get his first flight for 11 years, on Space Shuttle mission STS-51-B in 1985.