One of the Jackie Cochran stories I love to tell. Digging into her life via her own personal archives was an amazing part of writing FIGHTING FOR SPACE. Their friendship was pretty interesting and is one of elements that makes her feel like a real life Forrest Gump — she knew everyone and was connected to so much history. It’s honestly amazing. #l FIGHTING FOR SPACE is available however you like to consume books from wherever you like to buy books! #author #history
When I first raised the question, I told Mike Collins I needed to ask him about his underwear, and of course he immediately mimed taking off his pants. It was a very silly conversation but we got to the bottom of the underwear issue! #history #author
What would you bring as your first snack on a trip to the Moon? When Dick signed an Earthrise picture for me later, he wrote “no sandwich” above the signature. Then I asked him about the tuna incident and made him cry-laugh, but that’s another story. He always called me good girl after that! #history #author #apollo
PSA: don’t launch your rocket through a storm. Why didn’t NASA scrub the launch? A couple of reasons, foremost was that President Nixon was there and there was a bit of a need to get it off the ground while he was on site. Also the rocket was supposed to be pretty damn hardy, I mean it was launching to the Moon, through some pretty big extremes, a little rain never hurt anything, right? The mission landed at the Ocean of Storms and there were no further problem… aside from them losing the camera timer they’d snuck on board to take a truly epic selfie of both Pete and Al on the Moon. As such we never got a dual astronaut picture. Still my favourite mission! #author #history #apollo #space
My favourite moment from any Apollo mission. I’m going to have to tell the story of telling Dick Gordon about this in another reel, it’s darn good! #author #history #space #nasa
Probably the coolest eclipse shot ever. Taken November 23, 1969, during Apollo 12’s return from the Moon. They did a lot of interesting photography experiments — zodiacal light being the other cool one — but this is definitely some of my favourite footage from that mission. Apollo 12 stands as my favourite mission and is also what my cat is named for the commander, Pete Conrad. Yes, my cat has his own surname. #author #space #historian
Dagnabbit. Next time @adlerplanet. Also the museum closes at 4, why can’t I go in at 3:30! Take my money! I think it’s still here anyways? Gemini 12 was Jim Lovell and Buzz Aldrin, and Lovell being from the Chicago area is why it’s here. I’ll find some good footage soon of just how tiny that spacecraft is. I’m never not going to love Gemini. #author #history
Apollo 8, properly speaking, was the C’ (C Prime) mission. Each Apollo mission had a letter designating its goals on the path to the landing. The C mission was the Earth orbital test flight of the Command Module, then D was the Command and Lunar Modules tested in Earth orbit. E was the same mission but at a very high orbital altitude. F was meant to be the first lunar mission, a full dress rehearsal of the landing. When the Lunar Module was so behind, NASA created the C’ flight — Command Module only lunar flight — then returned to Earth orbit for the D mission, then scrapped the E mission entirely. It was a huge risk that paid off. Bill Anders who took the Earthrise image, and who died just last week, said of the image that we went to the Moon and what we discovered was ourselves. And 1968 was not a great year for America! There were riots, MLK and RFK were assassinated, Vietnam… in all the fan mail NASA got after Apollo 8, one woman simply wrote, “You saved 1968.” So yeah. This was an amazing one to see at the @msichicago! #author #history #apollo #nasa
Have you ever thought about the manpower splashdown landings take? Recovery is pretty intensive! In the 1960s, NASA embarked on a massive program to move away from splashdowns by turning the Gemini spacecraft into a glider with a deployable, inflatable sail. The Gemini Rogallo wing was tested in small scale and in manned vehicles, and it successfully landed and sent three pilots to the hospital. There was even a proposal to add a 13th mission to the Gemini program just to try out the landing system. It never flew. But I do have a tattoo of it! #history #author #space
This wasn’t a one-off. There’s a decently rich history of America getting planes to the RCAF through creative means with the ultimate end of helping Britain in the war against Hitler. I’ve known about the horse-drawn planes for a while, but rolling it down the hill was a new one for me! As always, there’s more to the story, but just wanted to share the little tidbit! #history #author
The Saturn V shake test. And before someone tells me — yes it was the Saturn 500-F, which also had a unique paint scheme. The Saturn V stood 363-feet tall, and though it was pretty solid it was still susceptible to things like natural disasters. The shake test was designed to reveal its natural frequencies and help engineers determine its structural integrity in a storm so they could make the call to when it needed to be rolled back into the safety of the Vertical Assemble Building, aka its garage. This happened after Hurricane Alma swept through in 1966, so that could have inspired the test. #author #history #space
Sending the two-man Gemini spacecraft to the Moon was seriously considered as a way to get there before the Russians. Seriously, NASA was up for any way to make sure they got there first. Pete Conrad was actually a huge proponent of the Lunar Gemini mission; that’s the reason his Gemini 11 flight hit the high altitude record of 850 miles. Also why my Pete Conrad needed to feature himself so prominently in this short. Yes, this is the vanishingly short version, but it’s still an amazing story! #history #author #NASA #space
Gum has a neat history, but it’s also disgusting. We have enzymes that break down food in our mouths and stomachs, and gum just… doesn’t! That’s so creepy I can’t handle it. The FDA definition certainly doesn’t help. And with gum not breaking down, that means there won’t be a gum tree in your stomach if you swallow it. You just pass it. (Though in rare cases it can get stuck so don’t eat it.) I’m an @altoids girl now. Also bonus Pete Conrad! #author #history #science
The V-1 and V-2 are the weapons we hear about when it comes to insane German engineering during WWII, especially since the V-2 was the forerunner to modern rockets. Spoiler: the guy who designed it designed the Saturn V that took Apollo to the Moon. But there were other V-weapons, V for vergeltungswaffe, which means vengeance weapon or retaliatory weapon. The V-3 is just one of a few that thankfully never saw combat. #author #history
Acoustic Kitty was a real program. The surgery to give the cat all the necessary implants took and hour and a half, and ended with them being a living little radio transmitter. The one kitten released on a mission was meant to listen in on suspected Soviet spies, but it never made it. I have a longer piece about Acoustic Kitty on my YouTube channel for those interested! The Cold War fascinates me because it was this prolonged period where it was all brainstorming and there are no bad ideas in brainstorming, right? Except OF COURSE THERE ARE! I love digging into weird history, especially history made of science and technology. #author #history #coldwar
Dolphins on LSD, funded (partially) by NASA. The 1960s were wild! The end of the story that didn’t fit into this already way too long post is that after the study ended, Peter was moved to another lab into a much smaller tank without sunlight; in the house with Margaret he’d had open space to move and lots of sun. He got so depressed he killed himself. Apparently dolphins can choose to stop breathing and just sink in their tanks. Margaret ended up moving back into the dolphin house — minus the flooding — and raised her family there. NASA still hasn’t found aliens, so no word if the dolphin communications funding was money well spent. #author #history
Boustrophedon. That’s the name for this type of writing that I couldn’t get to stay on screen long enough to read it! Modern versions of Ancient Greek texts do have punctuation and markers for pronunciation, which really helps when reading it. Another really interesting, similarly hard to wrap your head around as a native English speaker, is Hebrew having no vowels. There are dashes and dots to indicate vowels, but while you learn to read with them they aren’t common, like they’re in kids books but not adult book, and definitely not in the Torah. You just kinda have to know what the word is! And I really do love the Oxford comma. It’s apparently not standard in the US, and my Canadian writer self can’t stand when it’s missing in a book! #author #language #history
So Canadian. #author #history #whiskey #canada
My favourite Dick Gordon story. I met him a handful of times at various events, and every time I had a weird food related question, never anything big and technical. He started calling me “food girl” and when I got his autograph he signed it with “no sandwich.” Also we’re not discussing that era of bangs. They were muppet bangs. There was a muppet on my head for like five months before I cut them into proper pinup bangs myself! #author #history #space
Mary Toft. Doing weird things for likes before likes were a thing. I know medical science wasn’t the best in the 1720s, but to not question a rabbit coming out of a woman is baffling! Toft later said she’d been enchanted by the idea of rabbits after seeing some wild bunnies in a field, and had had dreams about giving birth to rabbits, which kind of explains her actions, but also doesn’t at all. #author #history
I found FIGHTING FOR SPACE at @fly2ohare! I was running through and glanced over, and got super excited it was here! And no, I didn’t sign it. I thought about it but honestly I was pressed for time and I’m always too scared of getting yelled at for defacing a book, even if it’s my own. Available in hardcover, soft cover, audiobook as narrated by me, and e-book! Back to education stuff. It was just too exciting not to share!! #author #history
I know I’m going to get a lot of pushback for this one, but the book captured my imagination so much more than the movie! Also I figure it’s high time I talk about the books I’m reading because there are a lot of them! Tell me what books you wish you could read without having seen the movie! We’re talking fiction here, but no question history is the worst offender for this. Screenwriters always add romance and drama and sex when the history is already amazing, and it drives me nuts! But I’m a book nerd I guess. And a history nerd. #author #books
Jacqueline Cochran Cosmetics was, at its peak, a luxury brand second only to Estée Lauder, and aviation was a massive theme — she sold travel cases that were perfect for taking in a cockpit, travel compacts that fit in pockets so she could freshen up before her pictures were taking getting out of a plane, and often talked about how her line was tested in harsh flight conditions so could withstand the stresses of daily life. What’s really interesting is the tone. She was all about makeup on the go when she founded the company in 1935, but by the 1950s when she started hiding her age, she got heavily into the anti-aging messaging. A lot of people have pointed to her branding as negative toward women, I see it as a reflection of her own self-consciousness. Either way, I have a solid collection of her line and by all accounts her face creams and lotions were excellent for the skin at the time! #author #history #cosmetics #aviation
Learning about Jackie’s friendship with Amelia was such a fun part of researching this book! I have to tell you guys about the whole ESP thing they shared, too, it’s pretty weird but I love it! FIGHTING FOR SPACE is available however you like to consume books wherever you like to get them! #author #history #aviation
