You Too Are MAKING HISTORY
 

My father was filing and going through some old papers in his files recently and ran across a couple of interesting bits of space memorabilia that he brought to me last time we met to chat. I was floored that he passed these on to me and I had no idea he had such items in his possession.

1969 was the year my father introduced me to model rocketry with a Centuri Astro-1 starter set purchased for me for my eighth birthday. Dad enjoyed helping me build and fly my model rockets and we would always watch the Saturn V missions on TV. He often reminded me of his job with The Boeing Company working on the S-IC first stage booster at the Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans. He was proud of his involvement in the program.

I scanned the front and back of a medallion that he gave me from the Apollo 8 mission. That mission carried metal in this medallion on mans first flight to the moon. I hope the attached image scanned clear enough to read the text.

I also scanned the envelope and a letter from the launch vehicle branch general manager at The Boeing Company thanking him that his work contributed significantly to the successful launching of the first men to the Moon. There is a July 20th 1969 cancellation added to the envelope and also stamped first day of issue turning it into a collectors item. It also lists future planned missions and the stamp was printed from a die actually carried to the Moon on the first flight. Pretty exciting stuff!

I'm thinking of having these framed for my office to display as well as preserve them. I hope you guys find this interesting and enjoy the images!

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Steve,

That's wonderful stuff! It's great that your dad passed those on to you.

That is fantastic! You should build a Sheri's Sat V in honor of your dad ;)

Wow
 

Hehe, good suggestion :D

Steve, that is so cool. Good that your Dad passed that on to you. Both of you should be proud. That's when the country hung together for the space race.

I've been really stoked the past few days thinking about these items and I finally got in touch with my father and spoke to him for a while about the short time he worked for Boeing at Michoud. Seems the budget cuts were already surfacing and he told me he was laid off in 1969 after S-IC-6 was already finished and shipped to the Cape, actually just a very short time prior to the July 16th Apollo 11 launch. He didn't think much about saving the envelope and the letter other than it was a cool little item and said some of the guys even threw them away. The covers were different in the image and the Boeing cover is somewhat unique. I found others in internet searches with the three astronauts on the cover, and another with the LM but the one with the Saturn V and "You Too Are Making History" must have been the unique printing for Boeing employees. I found a website the other day that sells one cover version for around $55 to $60 mounted in a frame.

I was interested and searched for a few images of the Michoud plant and found a few nice images on the NASA NTRS {NASA Technical Report Server} and I copied him an email with the images to see what he would say.

He described working on the boosters laid horizontal after the five F1 engines were installed. I found images on NASA of just that.

I wish I could walk into work and see that!

Enough dreaming ..... I need to get back to building some rockets!

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These pics are awesome! Man, I'd give Bill's right nut to be able to walk through that plant, "in the day." :D

Let me know if you need it. I had them disconnected a few years ago anyway. Now they just hang around and look good. :eek: :eek: :eek: :D

I found a lot of images of the Saturn S-IB and Saturn S-IC in various stages of assembly. The link to the NASA Technical Reports Server is here:

http://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp




I think Scott may have confused Lance Armstrong with Neil Armstrong ..... :rolleyes:

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Love it
 

I love the pictures. It would be something to see the plant making an Apollo size rocket now.

Well I was reading this post from Dlazarus6660 about 45 years ago today and decided Wednesday to email the link to my father to check out the awesome pictures

http://www.oldrocketforum.com/showthread.php?t=14163

I called him yesterday and after a short conversation and just before ending our call asked him if he had read the article at the link I sent him the night before. He said he did and it brought back great memories of working at the Michoud facility and he enjoyed the article.

He passed away this afternoon at the age of 75 and although I am completely saddened to lose him, I am very proud of his accomplishments.

Thanks for sharing that link. It gave me a fine last conversation with my father that truly loved rockets and got me into this hobby when I was a kid.

Godspeed Dad.

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