"Amiable Strangers"
Three distinct personalities, one goal: reach the moon.
- By Michael Klesius
- AirSpaceMag.com, May 21, 2009
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NASA
Aldrin shows up for work in his Corvette six days before launch. The Corvette might have been the car of choice for moonwalkers anyway, but the attraction was fueled by a Houston Chevy dealer who offered any astronaut a deep discount. Armstrong had also bought one upon his arrival in Houston. It was damaged in his garage during a house fire in April 1964. In a bit of foreshadowing, Armstrong’s next door neighbor in the El Lago suburb favored by the astronauts was Ed White, who would perish in the January 1967 Apollo 1 fire. White helped Neil and Janet Armstrong get their young sons away from the house, and White then helped Neil push the Corvette out of the superheated garage.
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Comments (1)
While the astronauts were deserving heros of the Apollo project your series needs a section on one person in particular, George M. Low. It was he who met the challange of the disastrous fire that killed three astronauts and brought together the science and engineering that made the capsule workable.
George was originally brought from the Cleveland NASA lab to the Office of Manned Space Flight by Abe Silverstine. After the fire he was transferred to Houston to take over the design of the capsule. Without him the Moon landing may never have happened. After the landing and the instigation of the Space lab project he was made Deputy Administrator of NASA. His life story would be worth an article.
Posted by Robert E. Blue on June 24,2009 | 12:16 PM