Ben Branch September 11, 2019

This Apollo Moon mission map shows the GOSS-Mission profile, it was originally published by the NASA Office of Manned Space Flight and it’s been signed by the original Apollo astronauts Fred Haise, Charlie Duke, Jim McDivitt, Walt Cunningham, Michael Collins, Jim Lovell, Richard Gordon, Buzz Aldrin, and Dave Scott. All of these men are famous…
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Ben Branch August 18, 2019

NASA – Past And Present Dreams Of The Future is a book by Benedict Redgrove, it’s the result of 9 years of intensive work including exclusive behind the scenes access at NASA – the finished book weighs in at a hefty 10 lbs and contains over 200 never-before-seen images. Regardless of whether you grew up…
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Ben Branch June 16, 2018

The NASA Saturn V Owners’ Workshop Manual is a comprehensive guide to the world’s most famous rocket, best known for its role in sending the Apollo missions, including Apollo 11, to the Moon. Each Saturn V launch cost $185 million in 1960s dollars, that’s over $1.1 billion today, the rocket had a payload to LEO of…
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Ben Branch March 22, 2018

The Voyager Golden Record LP Box Set was developed as an Earth-bound companion for the famous golden records contained within both the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 space probes launched in 1977. As of 2018, Voyager 1 is now the most distant man-made object from the Earth – over 21,000,000,000 kilometres away and continuing to…
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Ben Branch June 26, 2016

The Lockheed YF-12 Interceptor was the aircraft that would go on to become the SR-71 Blackbird – one of the most famous of all the Skunk Works projects. The YF-12 was capable of Mach 3 and above, it set 9 world records for speed and altitude in a single afternoon (later surpassed by the SR-71),…
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Ben Branch October 16, 2015

Bulova and Omega were in a heated battle during the early years of the Space Race to become the official chronograph used in space and eventually worn on the surface of the Moon. As is well known, Omega won the battle and specially prepared Speedmasters were worn by all Apollo astronauts. What isn’t as widely…
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Ben Branch October 15, 2015

Until very recently I wasn’t aware that NASA’s Gemini astronauts were issued with switchblades for emergency use, it’s likely that the knives were intended to be used in the result of a crash landing in a forest or jungle rather than the ocean as planned. Soviet cosmonauts from the same era were issued with machetes for…
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Ben Branch September 6, 2015

Moonwalk One is a film that started production 18 months before the launch of Apollo 11, NASA wanted the mission recorded for posterity and so they hired Francis Thompson to head the project, who was widely considered to be the best documentary filmmaker in the USA at the time. In 1970 the population of the…
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Ben Branch August 27, 2015

Michael Kagan is an artist with a unique style that tends to appeal to people who are otherwise not particularly interested in art, especially those with an interest in engineering, machines and flight. In order to see the images in Kagan’s paintings you typically have to stand a few feet back from the canvas, if…
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Ben Branch April 15, 2015

This American flag was onboard Apollo 12 for the entirety of its mission to the Moon in November of 1969, it’s made of silk and has the signature of Alan L. Bean in the lower right corner – Bean was the Lunar Module Pilot for the mission, which also happened to be his first time…
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Ben Branch November 18, 2014

The Apollo 13 Owners’ Workshop Manual is one of the most detailed and reader-friendly books about the Apollo 13 mission currently in print. It’s the work of David Baker – a veteran of the Apollo Space Program and a man who was actually in the room working with the other engineers on the consumables calculations…
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Ben Branch May 18, 2014

This Apollo 11 parade wallpaper is a wonderful astronaut eye-view of a classic American ticker-tape parade. It’s thought that the first ever ticker tape parade took place in New York on October the 28th 1886 during the dedication of the Statue of Liberty – it was a spontaneous celebration caused by a stockbroker flinging reels of stock…
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