During the heat of the space race in the 1960's, N.A.S.A. decided it needed a ball point pen to write in zero gravity.

After considerable research and development, the Astronaut Pen was created and though it worked, it was at a cost of about $1 million dollars.

Back here on Earth,  the Soviet Union faced with the same problem... used a pencil.

The picture on the left is of Buzz Aldrin during the Apollo 11 moon landing. Most pictures from the first moon landing with an astronaut in it is of Aldrin. Only five were snapped with Armstrong somewhat in the frame - but not one of those were intended to be of Neil - he was accidentally in those..

It was July 20th 1969 at around 10:56 PM EDT. when Neil Armstrong first stepped onto the surface of the moon and uttered "That's one small step for man... a giant leap for mankind."
 

Check out the latest info on Space Station ALPHA which, by the way I saw flying by tonight July 26th as it crossed over Nashville from Southwest to Northeast. It came and went in just under two minutes between 20:52 and 20:54. It looked like a brilliant and rather large fastmoving star. COOL! With a small telescope you can see colors and the solar panels it is said.
 

     Visit the "Skywatch" secion of NASA's website to see if ISS´orbit goes over your house :-)

Is this the future of commercial space flight? (below)

(Left) Check for the next scheduled Space Shuttle launch

F I R S T :
The date was April 12, 1961.
The ship was Vostok 1.
The man was Jurij Gagarin.
From the United Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).
He was a Kosmonaut.

S E C O N D :
The date was May 5th, 1961.
The ship was the "Frreedom 7" capsule.

The rocket was the Mercury Redstone.
The man was Alan Shepard.
From the USA.
He was a Astronaut.

T H I R D :
The date was October 15, 2003.
The ship was Shenzhou 5.
The man was Yang Liwei.
He was from The People's Republic of China.
He was a Taikonaut.

For the first time ever, a space craft built by civilians reaches low earth orbit and the private space faring business goes in full swing.

F O U R T H :

The date was June 21. 2004.
The ship was SpaceShipOne.
The man was Mike Melvill.
He was the first to pilot a privately built space craft.

SpaceShipOne reached a record breaking altitude of 328,491 feet (approximately 62 miles or 100 km), making Melvill the first civilian to fly a spaceship out of the atmosphere and the first private pilot to earn astronaut wings.

I HAVE SEEN A LAUNCH !!!!

This beautiful collage picture to the right is the image for the cover to the video-CD documenting our historic visit to the Cape in April of 2001.
     On launchpad 39A stood the mighty Endeavour fuming and before too long, STS-100 went soaring into a blue sky (of course, disappearing into a cloud 20 seconds after take-off - but that's a longer story).

     Click the pic to the right to see our adventure at the Cape - and other places from the "Olsson-Rambell Southeastern US Tour 2001".

Now what about the Soviet Union's space shuttle? The not so-famous BURAN project?  Well, it actually did fly in November 1988, Hit the buran page for the pics.

Did you know that... The Space Shuttle "Challenger" was originally built as a test shuttle for vibration tests during shuttle development amd later reconfigured as a space faring shuttle.

Did you know that the Space Shuttle "Endeavour" was built to replace Challenger and wasn't ready until 1992 (six years after Challenger blew up).

Did you know that the Space Shuttle Enterprise was named after Starship Enterprise from the TV Series "Star Trek". Space Shuttle Enterprise is currently on display at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center. You can actually look at it via a webcam right here - right now

Did you know that... The Commander of the first Space Shuttle Flight ("Columbia", April 12, 1981) was John Young and that he also walked on the moon with Apollo 16. And ALSO piloted Gemini 3.

Aaaaaaand... Did you know that it was pure coincidence that the Maiden Flight of the Space Shuttle Columbia happened exactly 20 years after the flight of Jurij Gagrin's Vostok 1 flight in 1961. Columbia was supposed to lift off the day before...

Did you know that the Space Shuttle Fleet is to be retired in 2010 with the completion of the International Space Station and the following introduction of the new "Crew Exploration Vehicle ("CEV"). Check out the latest news about Project Constellation here.