Ed Buckbee

Very Interesting speaker. He discussed the early history of the space program, focusing mainly on Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo. He was in media relations for all those early programs and helped create (with Dr. Von Braun) and run the Space Museum here.

He shared some amazing first hand account of the challenges and successes of those early pioneers. My favorite story was his last. I may not get it totally right, but this is close:

As Alan Shepard was preparing to launch for Apollo XIV, he couldn't sleep the night before. He decides to go to the launch site and is going up to different levels when he sees a light. He goes to the light and runs into an engineer working. They begin talking, basic general conversation. The engineer asks Shepard if he knew what each of the parts did. Shepard then says, "I've never met anyone who knew what all 3 million pieces do.". The engineer says, "Me neither, but I'm here working late to make sure that my part works and we won't let you down."

That is a concept that can be applied very globally. If we did our part, imagine what we could accomplish.

After the speech, we all get a copy of his book and we took our group photo in our flight suits. Good times.

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