Apollo 11 to Apollo 17

Ex president, Author, and current Engineering instructor at Oregon Institute of Technology, Lawrence J. Wolf might be of interest. He also is full of wonderfull stories of this time, and place.

Could not even understand, what you want to say or ask.

One small question:

My "lovly wifes" father or My lovly "wifes father" ?

When I lived in St AUGUSTINE FLA. I meet serveral retired people who used to work to NASA, They talked about some groups where older employees got togeather around Orlando or Daytona.

Few remained living close to the Space Center to swampy there and the bugs.

Don't forget the Marshal Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Von Braun was the MSFC director in those days. This is where the Saturn V booster was developed. I am sure there are associations here in Huntsville. A few years back there was still a retired German rocket scientist living in my old neighborhood. Hard to understand him though.

Once you find and connect with all of these GREAT people, please inquire if they would get together for a meeting to reminisce and record all of these stories. A time will come when they will no longer be with us and these memories will be lost forever! Please also include the astronauts that these engineers supported. I bet there are a few stories we'd like to hear about them!!!!

I grew up during the Redstone-Gemini-Apollo era. America was never greater than at that time in our lives. I would love to be included in this reunion!!!

My Dad was employed at NASA, Johnson Center (then known as NASA's Manned the Spacecraft Center but I think it was called Mission Control Center when my Day worked there) in the late 60's, early 70's. He was a WWII Vet and worked as a Fireman. He was there during some of the historical disasters including the lunar Lander simulator crash/explosion (I've got a piece a fuel line he says he collected from the accident area), along with numerous fires and accidents (the last one damaged his eyesight and 'retired' him). I wish I could find some of his friends and co-workers to learn more about him as he was the typical quiet type and I later heard stories about his WWII experiences and of course only vaguely remember his stories. He passed away in 1994.

And don't forget those of us who worked at NASA Langley Research Center and supported all the Apollo missions. We had such things as the Lunar Lander facility and the Gemini/Apollo docking simulator (suspended from the top of our hanger). Plus, much of the work to determine what happened to Apollo 13 and how to get them home was resolved at Langley.

Unfortunately, during Apollo 13 and the subsequent moon landing I was engaged in an extended vacation in sunny Southeast Asia so I missed all that fun.

Hooker

PS - Langley was the gestation location for all the other NASA centers after Johnson decided to steal our work and move it to Texas.

My uncle was a lead engineer on the environmental control design for the LM. He has great stories as well. He worked at Bethpage Long Island at the Grumman plant as well as being on site at Kennedy for all the launches. He still lives in Long Island and is doing well.

I took him to an astronaut autograph show and he had a blast. The next show is Nov. 7-9^th at Kennedy. I'm sure it will be a blast. Make it if you can, here's the link:

http://www.astronautscholarship.org/show2008/

Interestingly enough, the Apollo Project itself, went well into the late 70's.

While I was in school, I worked for Collins Avionics (Rockwell) in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on the Apollo systems. Assembled and tested radios, cables and other electronic gear for the project.

I recall very extreme assembly procedures for all the equipment and cabling.

Every piece was extensively checked and inspected.

I sure wish I would have kept a couple of the assembly and inspection procedures.

It would be interesting to compare to todays processes.