The Space Age at Sixteen
It has been sixteen years since Sputnik. I was 32 years old then, a man in a bathrobe in Ohio staring up at an ordinary sky. Now I'm 48.
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The Summer I Fell in Love with the Space Program
It started with a radio in 1961. A man named Gagarin. Coffee going cold. Twelve years later: twelve men on the Moon. I've been paying attention the whole time. I still am. I keep looking up. I keep thinking: next. What's next. Where do we go from here? I hope…
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What the Moon Taught Me About Earth
The Earthrise photograph from Apollo 8, and the Blue Marble from Apollo 17. Two photographs taken from beyond Earth. Both are of Earth, not the Moon. Maybe that's the real thing the Moon program gave us: a picture of home from somewhere else. A new way to see the place…
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Sixty Days in Space — Skylab 3
Al Bean, Owen Garriott, and Jack Lousma have been in space for thirty days now on Skylab 3, with thirty more to go. What are they actually doing up there?
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My Neighbor Harold Goes to the Hospital
Harold had a minor heart attack last Tuesday. He's going to be fine, the doctors say. He asked me from his hospital bed if anything important happened with the space program while he was in.
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Skylab Saved — A Repair No One Planned For
Skylab launched on May 14 and immediately began falling apart. The first crew delayed their launch to plan a repair. They fixed it.
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My Last Entry for a While
I've been keeping this notebook since 1957. The Apollo program is over. Skylab is still going. I'm going to write one more time before I put it away for a while.
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Eleven Years of Clippings
I went through my clipping folder last weekend. Seventeen shoeboxes. Twelve years of newspaper articles, radio transcripts, magazine features, mission summaries. Betty watched me spread them across the living room floor and said, "I told you so." She was right. I have a problem. It's a wonderful problem to have.
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Skylab Is Coming
The Skylab space station launches in May and the first crew follows in June. After Apollo, this is what's next for American human spaceflight.
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Where Do We Go From Here?
New Year's Day 1973. The Apollo program is over. Skylab is coming — a space station, American men in orbit for months at a time. A Space Shuttle is being designed. We'll be back on the Moon by 1985, surely. Maybe we'll be on Mars by the 1990s. (I suspect…
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