NOTES ON
1963-1965 An
interest in space research
http://comp.uark.edu/~dsears/photos/1963%20space/
I
think my interest was sparked by the first attempts to launch men into space in
1961. The excitement of putting a
capsule – yes they called it a capsule – on a modified V2 rocket and firing
them into the Atlantic. Then the drama
of Gargarin’s flight. With a backdrop
of nineteen-fifties science fiction, it all seemed too exciting to be
true. We were lucky to be living at
such a time. I guess I still feel this
way. Privileged to be the generation
that witnessed humanity’s first steps off our planet. I still get goose bumps.
The fact that I have made a career out of space science, served on NASA
committees, received grants from NASA, even proposed a mission to NASA, adds an
extra something special.
The
first newspaper clippings on space I pasted in a scrapbook. Dad noticed. For the next decade or so he routinely came home from the
railways with newspaper pages he had found in papers left on trains, or given
to him by his friend the wholesale newsagent.
In fact, the newsagent gave him entire magazines to bring home to
me. I still have most of these things
and the scrapbooks have been donated to the University of Arkansas libraries. A some point, I think mid-teens, I joined
the British Interplanetary Society and bought a tie.
I built
models. Tom Richter, my best friend for
the first three years at the tech, gave me a construction kit of the Nike
missile. It was cool. You could not buy them in Maidstone, and Tom
bought his on the U.S. Air Force base.
Certainly you could not buy models of the Mercury and Gemini
capsules. So I made my own out of cardboard
and painted them battleship grey. The
range spacecraft was crafted out of balsa wood, and also carefully painted in
colours I thought realistic, black, grey and gold. It hung by threads of cotton
from the ceiling of my bedroom until Mum flattened it against the wall when
moving a closet to clean. It was a sad
sight, the pieces of wood dangling from four or five threads. But even sadder was the sight of Mum’s
upset.
My British Interplanetary Society Tie