DailyDirt: The Right Stuff From The Original Space Race
It's surprising how poorly documented some of the Apollo missions are now -- with lost original footage of the first lunar landing (eventually restored from other recordings). Now we're entering a new phase of space that's more privatized, so it's even more likely that commercial space programs will not be preserved for the benefit of all. Maybe someday all of NASA's tweets will be safely stored on magnetic tape, and SpaceX's first reusable rocket landing video will be preserved in HD. Or maybe we'll have to check on Elon Musk's closet after he dies to look for Martian souvenirs.
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- Neil Armstrong stashed away some cool stuff from his first walk on the moon -- including the camera that was used to record the mission and a bunch of cables and straps. Armstrong's widow recently found these artifacts in a closet, and historians should probably go through his underwear drawer to check for moon rocks. [url]
- NASA's first group of astronauts (aka the "Mercury 7") were a bunch of guys who were put through all kinds of endurance tests to make sure they were made of the right stuff to go into space. However, few people have heard of the group of "Mercury 13" women who also trained to be astronauts in the 1950s (but never got to go to space). [url]
- Hundreds of plant seeds were sent on the 1971 Apollo 14 mission and came back -- and some of the "Moon Trees" are still growing today. There wasn't an official list to keep track of Moon Trees when they were planted in the mid-1970s, but there's a partial list now maintained by NASA. [url]
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