New Home for SDASM Insider
SDASM Insider has moved to its new home on the newly-designed and updated San Diego Air & Space Museum’s website. To continue following the blog, please head over to http://blogs.sandiegoairandspace.org/news.
All of the entries from this site have been imported over to the new blog. New posts will only be available on the new blog, there will be no further updates here.
Thanks for following us and checking out our new home.
Highlights of Jim Newman’s Space Day Presentation
As I am sure you already know (and just in case you did not), astronaut Jim Newman joined us for our Space Day celebration. Below is a video containing a few highlights from his presentation:
Gene Kranz Back at SDASM
Gene Kranz ( who last visited us for the Apollo 8 anniversary) returned to the Museum as a VIP guest for a third-party event this week. Luckily, he took some time to talk and pose with a few of the Museum’s staff. Below is a photo of Gene posing with a some (lovely) museum staff in front of the Apollo 9 spacecraft.
Plus he took some time to sign a few books for some special guests.
Space Day 2010
This past Saturday (8 May) around 900 people visited the Museum and attended Space Day. Over the course of the day, visitors had a chance to interact with 26 local and national space organizations. Kids learned all about space while putting on moon shoes, touching Moon and Mars meteorites, launching pneumatic rockets, driving Mars rovers, and controlling robots (robots people, ROBOTS!).
The highlight was astronaut Jim Newman’s (my previous post on Newman) presentation. For around an hour he talked about his four missions into space and then spent over an hour and a half signing autographs (he had to leave at 1:00 pm but he stayed until 2:00 pm because he is that nice). Additionally, he added his signature next to Sally Ride’s and Tracey Caldwell’s on our Space Shuttle cockpit.
Now it is time to relax and maybe start thinking about Space Day 2011 (maybe).
Check out more photos or add your own to our Flickr Photo Group.
From Tajikistan to San Diego
Once a month, the Museum hosts a special guest speaker for our volunteers. This month, Robert Frimtzis, author of From Tajikistan To The Moon: A Story Of Tragedy, Survival And Triumph Of The Human Spirit
His story of escape from the Nazi invasion and then from Soviet oppression was fascinating. He then immigrated to the U.S., penniless with little English, but went on to graduate from college, work on multiple space programs (Apollo Lunar Module simulators, Lunar Surveyor, and GRO), and raise a family of geniuses (3 out of 4 have PhDs).
His soft-spoken presentation kept me engaged as he showed us pictures of his childhood in the Soviet Union and Europe up through his career in the aerospace industry. The best image was of a letter he sent to a family member that had a stamp of approval from the Soviet Union officials because the letter contained no subversive or anti-government writing.
I have yet to read his book, but luckily, the Museum has purchased a copy. I hope it is half as good as his presentation.
You can find out more about Robert Frimtzis and his book by clicking here.
