Curated category
American aerospace engineers
- Elon MuskElon Reeve Musk sold a video game he wrote himself at age twelve for approximately $500. The game was called Blastar, built in BASIC, and sold to a magazine…
- Roger B. ChaffeeRoger Bruce Chaffee arrived in the world on the 15th of February 1935. His birthplace was Grand Rapids, Michigan. The family had moved there from Greenville…
- James McDivittJames Alton McDivitt Jr. was born on the 10th of June 1929, in Chicago, Illinois. He grew up in Kalamazoo, Michigan, where he earned the rank of Tenderfoot…
- Ed White (astronaut)Ed White took his last step back inside a spacecraft on the 27th of January 1967, and by that evening, he was gone. But the moment that defined his life came…
- Stuart RoosaStuart Allen Roosa orbited the Moon 34 times, alone, while his two crewmates walked on the surface below. No one was watching him through a television camera.
- Gene CernanGene Cernan stepped off the lunar surface on the 14th of December 1972, climbed the ladder of the Apollo 17 lunar module, and has not been followed by any…
- Fred HaiseFred Wallace Haise Jr. came within days of becoming the sixth person to walk on the Moon. Born on the 14th of November 1933, in Biloxi, Mississippi, he…
- Jack SwigertJack Swigert was born on the 30th of August, 1931, in Denver, Colorado, and he died on the 27th of December, 1982, seven days before he was supposed to be…
- Neil ArmstrongNeil Armstrong set his left boot on the lunar surface at 02:56 UTC on the 21st of July 1969, and said seven words that an estimated 530 million people heard…
- Robert SeamansRobert Channing Seamans Jr. was born on the 30th of October 1918 in Salem, Massachusetts. He attended Lenox School in Lenox, Massachusetts before earning a…
- John Young (astronaut)John Watts Young flew in space six times, walked on the Moon, and commanded the first Space Shuttle mission. No other astronaut in history flew in four…
- Frank BormanFrank Borman received a telegram after returning from the Moon. It was from a stranger, and it said simply: "Thank you Apollo 8.
- Wally SchirraWally Schirra was the only astronaut to fly in all three of America's first crewed space programs: Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo.
- Alfred WordenAlfred Worden was, for three days in 1971, the most isolated human being who had ever lived. While his crewmates David Scott and James Irwin walked on the…
- Ken MattinglyKen Mattingly came closest to the Moon without ever landing on it. Born on the 17th of March, 1936, in Chicago, Illinois, Thomas Kenneth Mattingly II spent a…
- Robert R. GilruthRobert Rowe Gilruth was born on the 8th of October 1913 in Nashwauk, Minnesota. He moved to Duluth when he was nine years old and graduated from Duluth…
- Thomas J. Kelly (aerospace engineer)Thomas Joseph Kelly was born on the 14th of June 1929 in Brooklyn, New York. He grew up in Merrick, a middle-class neighborhood where parents compared their…
- Alan BeanAlan LaVern Bean was born on the 15th of March, 1932, in Wheeler, Texas, a small town in the northeastern corner of the Texas Panhandle.
- Deke SlaytonDeke Slayton was born on the 1st of March 1924, on a farm near Leon, Wisconsin, and by 1959 he was one of the seven most famous test pilots in America.
- Edgar MitchellEdgar Dean Mitchell was the sixth person to walk on the Moon, and on his way home, something happened to him that no training could have prepared him for.
- Joseph Francis SheaJoseph Francis Shea was born on the 5th of September, 1925, in the Bronx borough of New York City. He grew up as the eldest son in a working-class Irish…
- James IrwinJames Benson Irwin told his mother, when he was about 12 years old, that he wanted to go to the Moon and might be the first person to do so.
- John HouboltJohn Cornelius Houbolt was born in Altoona, Iowa on the 10th of April 1919. His parents were first-generation Dutch immigrants who raised him during a time…
- Ronald Evans (astronaut)Ronald Ellwin Evans Jr. is the last human being to orbit the Moon alone. On the 14th of December 1972, while his crewmates Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt…
- Rusty SchweickartRussell Louis Schweickart arrived in Neptune Township, New Jersey on the 25th of October 1935. He grew up on a hardscrabble farm that produced hay and…
- Harrison StormsHarrison Allen Storms, Jr. was born on the 15th of July 1915, and by the time he died on the 11th of July 1992, just four days before his birthday, he had…
- Igor SikorskyIgor Sikorsky built a small rubber band-powered helicopter at age 12, long before the world had any reason to believe such machines could carry a person.
- Wernher von BraunWernher von Braun helped carry humanity to the Moon, yet more people died building his most famous weapon than were ever killed by it.
- Abe SilversteinAbe Silverstein named the Apollo program after the Greek and Roman god of light and the sun, a choice that would define one of humanity's greatest…