Christopher Columbus Kraft Jr. is an appropriate name for a pioneering space explorer. Kraft did not explore space himself, but he made it possible for American astronauts to do so, from Mercury to the Space Shuttle. He was the primary inventor of the mission control concept, and implemented it during Project Mercury and after, including training a cadre of controllers and creating a worldwide tracking network.

Before Neil Armstrong walked on the Moon and before he flew on Gemini 8, he was a NASA test pilot. Noted for his engineering excellence and technical capability as a pilot, Armstrong became one of only 12 pilots to fly the ultimate experimental aircraft – the North American X-15.

Only two survived the crash of the Wingfoot Express—Henry Wacker, the chief mechanic, and John Boettner, the pilot.  They became known as members one and two of the Caterpillar Club, an organization formed in November 1922 consisting of people who had used parachutes to make an emergency jump.

In this guest blog from Smithsonian Channel, we share the story of Neil Armstrong's Lunar Landing Research Vehicle crash in May 1968.

We take a look at the famous speeches that led to the first Moon landing, and one that thankfully never had to be delivered.

From an outsider’s perspective, Lamar Dodd must have seemed like an unlikely choice for a commission to create paintings on the subject of space. Dodd was in the first group recruited for the NASA Art Program, which tasked artists with translating the cultural and scientific monumentality of the space missions to a national audience.

Bob Gilruth, more than anyone else, created the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs and the Houston center that managed them.

Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin was the first astronaut to have a Ph.D. We explore his thesis on “Line-of-Sight Guidance Techniques for Manned Orbital Rendezvous.”

Abraham Silverstein (1908-2001), created and named the Apollo program and, most critically, pushed the adoption of liquid hydrogen as a rocket fuel for the boosters that launched Apollo. 

Some of the world’s best pilots are the ones you hope never to see. In this episode, we’re talking about air rescue.