A Subject I Almost MISSed, Part 1

FYI: As you may know I really enjoy reading books about space, namely the Apollo program. In this series, I will share with you some stories and titles of the space books I have read this school year. It is so long I will break it down into 5 parts, posting one per week. :) ~Photobug

Maybe it’s the adventure and excitement of going to another world. Or perhaps it’s the element of unknown. But anyways, the story of Project Apollo is one of my all-time favorites.

This past May I wrote an article describing the different space-related books I had read over the past 5 some months. And right here I’m going to do it again….I have not run out of books to read! ;)

In July I decided to see for myself what Apollo books our university library might have, as I had (thought) I had exhausted our public library’s Apollo books.

And what do you know? At our university library I find tons of space books I haven’t read yet…at least a dozen! So, one book at a time…

First I read Flight: My Life in Mission Control. It’s Chris Kraft’s autobiography. He was one of the main key guys when NASA just was getting started…like back in 1959. Kraft ended up being the flight director for Mercury and about half of Gemini. (The Flight Director was the main guy in Mission Control making all the decisions. Kraft entitled his book Flight because during a mission the flight director was referred to as “Flight”.) It was amazing to read about Mercury and Gemini, subjects I knew almost nothing about. Previously I had read only books on Apollo. Anyway, Flight was totally awesome…and 355 pages. :D

As you may know, I really like finding really cool or funny tidbits of information about the U.S. space program and then tell them to people I meet. I found quite the funny story in Flight. (I also found this story in the book Animals in Space.) Anyway, Kraft told of NASA employee Guenter Wendt and a relentless Congressman. This was in the days when NASA was sending chimpanzees into space before the astronauts. Anyway, among many there were two space chimps named Enos and Ham.