Vintage Space

Recently I discovered Vintage Space hosted by Amy Shira Teitel and I'm surprised how long it took for me to encounter it.  Some years ago, a friend told me that he believed the moon landings were a hoax.  I immediately set to the task of demonstrating that we had landed on the moon.  Many times!  In the process, I became a fan of the US Space Program from the 1960s and early 70s.  I spent a lot of time on the NASA website and created spreadsheets of Space Race that broke down the satellite launches and manned spacecraft from both the US and Russia.  Amazingly, Vintage Space covers exactly that window.  It is all about the Apollo Program, covering the developments that fed into Apollo and all the current advances that are Apollo's progeny.  Amy is an extreme Apollo-phile, which is both good and bad.

 

To the good, between her blog and her YouTube channel, she has a vast encyclopedia of information about the space program and related science topics.  Fascinated with space history, she somehow turned that into a paying gig.  Way to go!

 

To the bad, she is something of a downer when proposed missions don't meet her Apollo achievement bar.  Thus, she is less than excited by the proposed SpaceX repeat of Apollo 8, the 1968 trip around the moon.  Been there, done that.  True, but we haven't been there and done that in 45 years.  A refresher with a new capsule might not be a bad idea.  Yes, she grants that is so but this isn't part of a larger program.  It's just a one off funded by a couple super rich tourists.  This is not advancing space exploration or space science.  She makes an excellent point but humans haven't left Earth orbit in decades and this will get the ball rolling.  She's also less than keen on landing people on Mars as that will suck all the funding from cheaper missions that will better expand human knowledge of space.  Yeah, kind of a downer but that is on her soapbox channel.

 

After watching just a couple of her videos, it became clear that I had only scratched the surface when I did my deep dive into the US Space Program.  Thumbs way up for Vintage Space.