Astronaut

RIP Moonwalker Alan Bean who sadly passed away yesterday, May 26th 2018. Alan Bean was the first astronaut I ever met. The most warm, personable and the funniest. I remember him talking…

What do you do if you fail the eyesight test for the US Air Force, then fail the eyesight test for the US Navy? You go straight over their heads and join…

I was 13 years old in 1984, the Cold War was still years away from thawing, Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative had been announced the year before, and Space Shuttle Challenger is launched…

In 1997 during a docking test with the use of an onboard remote control, an unmanned cargo vessel collided into the Russian Mir Space Station. The collision punctured part of the space…

I remember the 80s…a time for heroes, high-five flyers and top gun shuttle pilots. Just as well then that today, thanks to the team at Space Lectures, I met Scott Altman, a…

Mark and Scott Kelly are the only siblings to have travelled in space with 4 spaceflights each and NASA’s only set of identical twin astronauts . Today, thanks to the great team…

General Thomas P. Stafford is a veteran NASA astronaut who flew in space 4 times and in 4 different spacecraft, completing 6 rendezvous, orbited the moon and accumulated 507 hours in space.…

Tuesday November the 3rd sees us limping lamely along to the London Science Museum (£ Free), currently hosting the stunning Cosmonauts: Birth of the Space Age exhibition, a little steep at £14 each…

I am, by every definition, a nerd, a geek, a space nut, from astronomy and astrophotography to astronauts and Apollo from aged 4 to 44 (as I currently stand anyway).  Readers of…

Apollo 7 Astronaut Walt Cunningham was the lunar module pilot on Apollo 7, the first manned mission in the Apollo program after the fatal cabin fire of Apollo 1.  Today I’m meeting…

Moving around the galactic circles that I do (even though I’m not  a heavenly body or will ever be accused of having a heavenly body), I’m up in Manchester meeting meeting Apollo, Skylab…

Today I met Eileen Collins, a former United States Air force Colonel, test pilot, instructor and NASA astronaut becoming the first female pilot and first female commander of the Space Shuttle logging…

Moving in the kind of galactic circles that I do, I’m off to meet another Apollo astronaut, Fred Haise.  The fantastic team at www.space-lectures.com have managed to persuade “Freddo” over to the…

Today, I met Apollo and Space Shuttle astronaut Ken Mattingly and listen to his lecture The Spirit and Triumph of Apollo 13.  The significance of the date is not lost on me,…

Between 1968 and 1972, nine American spacecraft voyaged around the moon.  Twelve of those men on board unearthly shaped spacecraft, stepped foot onto the surface of another world, the only beings from…