Browse Items (21 total)

Stephen Hall was born in a small town in the north central part of Indiana. This town has about a population of 2,000 people. Stephen graduated from Eastern High School in 1963, and then he enrolled in Aeronautical/Neurospace Engineering at Purdue…

Vygantas Kulpa grew up in Huntsville, AL. Ever since he was young, Kulpa was always interested with the space program. He ended up going to college at UAH, and was considered a "feeder" co-op engineer, so he actually started out at The Marshall Space…

Brand Griffin was born in Medford, Oregon. His father was in the military, so they moved around a lot. Brand went to the University of Texas his first year of college, and he studied Architecture. Then, he graduated college with a degree in…

Michael Vaccaro was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1927. When he started high school at the age of 14, Pearl Harbor was attacked by the Japanese. When he graduated high school, he enlisted in the Navy in 1945 so he wouldn't have to go into the Army.…

After Robert McBrayer graduated college, he reported to the Johnson Space Center in March of 1963. He was there assigned to a section called "Biodynamics" and in that section, they worked on Human tolerances to impact sustaining acceleration and…

Charles Dischinger was born and raised in Virginia. As a small child, Charles's father would drive him over to the Langley Research Center in Virginia, and he was always engaged with the space program. Charles remembers watching every space launch on…

Edwin Pruett is from a small town in Alabama. He went to Auburn University, and when he was a sophomore there, he applied to a co-op position. In this co-op, he was assigned to a flight-dynamics group. Edwin was not satisfied with this position, so…

Charles VanValkenburgh grew up in Huntsville, AL, and he went to Auburn University. There, he majored in Industrial Design and he had a part-time job as a draftsman at one of the civil engineering firms. After graduating college, he received a job at…

Richard Heckman was born in Ohio, and he lived there until he was 9 years old. When he turned 9, his dad received a civil engineering job in Washington D.C., so they moved there soon after. After this, they then moved to Maryland. Richard explains…

Kenneth Smith discusses his career in astronautics.