NASA has long been an interesting topic for me. I have monitored almost every missile launch from the very beginning when President John Kennedy challenged them to put a man on the moon. I have a separate page here about my recollections from that launch. Even reading it again today, I still get goosebumps. That was such an awesome time.
Yesterday, I came across another tidbit that I hadn’t seen before. It was a short story about an astronaut on one of the early missions – Gemini 3. This was a two-man launch with Gus Grissom and John Young. At that time the space engineers had developed a variety of dehydrated meals in plastic bags. They were reconstituted with water before the astronauts somewhat reluctantly slurped them down.
As a prank, John Young decided to smuggle a corned beef sandwich on board in his space suit. When he tried to eat it in microgravity, bread crumbs began floating around the cabin. This could have been dangerous with the bread crumbs becoming stuck in the machinery. Fortunately, nothing adverse happened, but NASA didn’t seem to have much of a sense of humor about it. There was a congressional hearing and then it was then announced “We have taken steps … to prevent [a] recurrence of corned beef sandwiches in future flights.”
More NASA Tidbits
It is all of these tidbits that come to us even years later, that continues to keep my interest in these missions. Some of these astronauts have gone on to become statesmen both in congress and the Senate. We recently elected Mark Kelly as our Arizona Senator.
Sadly, we are also seeing obits on some of the early astronauts as they age. We have lost John Glenn and Gus Grissom among others. There was another tidbit that came out in April about Michael Collins, ‘Third Man’ of the Moon Landing. He died at age 90. It was said he was lonely as he kept a solitary watch in the Apollo command module as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon. Actually, he said that it was a restful time for him because he was on the backside of the moon and didn’t have to listen to all the control center chatter.
We may be losing them, but for me, they will always be in my memory.
NASA Goes on into new Endeavors
Ironically, I am editing this today which is March 8, 2025 and tonight we are to have another liftoff of a different sort. The space agency’s SPHEREx and PUNCH missions, which are sharing a ride aboard the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, are scheduled to lift off tonight from Launch Complex 4E at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The launch which has been postponed six times over the past week due to technical issues and bad weather, now has the greenlight after a successful launch readiness review on Friday (March 7) by launch managers from NASA’s Launch Services Program and SpaceX.
Launches from Vandenberg can sometimes be seen from my home here in AZ. I don’t know what the flight path will be, but I will be looking and listening to see it if I can. So after all these years, having watched the very first launches years ago, I still get excited about them. Science and Engineering is amazing and even though we may not be able to understand the details, the overall concept is still awesome to me. I’m getting old and may not be here when men land and live on Mars, but I’m pretty sure it will happen. Will there be aliens from other planets land here? We can only wonder.