NASA honours its greatest astronauts
‘Dream big, aim high’ say heroes of yesteryear, recalling thrills of space flight
CAPE CANAVERAL, FLA.— NASA’s earliest and greatest astronauts gathered at Kennedy Space Center on Friday to mark the opening of a new space exhibit in which they’re the stars.
Thirty astronauts, three of them moonwalkers, took part in the outdoor ceremony, including two who had extra reason to celebrate. Fifty years ago Friday, Jim Lovell and Buzz Aldrin launched on Gemini 12, the last of that program.
With all the excitement, Lovell forgot about Friday’s anniversary — until reminded by a reporter. He said spacewalks and rendezvous were refined on the two-man Gemini missions and “opened up the road to Apollo.” He later flew on Apollo 8, the first manned flight to the moon, and the infamous close-call Apollo 13.
Lovell’s Boy Scout handbook is on display at the exhibit’s new United States Astronaut Hall of Fame — relocated from its original location six miles down the road — along with his scouting sash and merit badges.
“I can’t believe it’s 50 years” since the last Gemini flight, said Thomas Stafford, of Gemini 6 and 9, Apollo 10 and the Apollo-Soyuz joint mission between the U.S. and Soviet Union.
In all, 30 U.S. astronauts spanning Gemini to shuttle — two of them women — gathered at Kennedy for the morning ceremony, which paid high tribute to NASA’s golden age of the 1960s and 1970s. Also present were the children of the late Alan Shepard, the first American in space, and the late Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon.
The retired astronauts — 25 of them Hall of Famers in matching navy blazers — joined a few hundred space program workers, military veterans, space buffs and tourists in the sunshine, right outside the new visitor centre exhibit, called “Heroes and Legends.”
Apollo 16 moonwalker Charlie Duke, 81, offered this advice to everyone, particularly the young people in the audience and watching on NASA TV: “Dream big, aim high.”