Charles Lurio: You really should read my book, Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8. I can see that it will reveal things about the 1960s space race that you don’t know. :)

I had been advised not to ask him about his Moon adventure, but I did anyway. He told me that the Apollo moonsuits would only be good for EVAs of about 72 hours, because the moon dust, “as fine as talcum powder,” got into the seals and compromised the airtight integrity of the suit. And he added, “Do you know what moondust smells like? …. Gunpowder.”

The Delta Clipper was a VTOL rocket decades before the Musk group pulled it off. See link above. Conrad was incensed that MacDac pulled the plug on the program, because they had spent the NASA money and were happy to continue building expensive, one-shot rockets. Conrad was trying to continue the flight testing with private funding, but died in a motorcycle accident.

https://space.nss.org/the-spaceship-that-came-in-from-the-cold-war-the-untold-story-of-the-dc-x/

I did a count. Of those Apollo astronauts who completed a space flight in Apollo programe (flight to Skylab space station are not counted), 10 are still alive. Four of them were on the moon and are still alive: 1. Buzz Aldrin (Apollo 11), 2. David Scott (Gemini 8, Apollo 9, Apollo 15), 3. Charles Duke (Apollo 16), 4. Harrison Schmitt (Apollo 17). Are all born between 1930 and 1935. So if you want to meet one of them in person, you have to hurry.

The others who did not walk on the lunar surface and are still alive are: Jim Lovell (Apollo 8, Apollo 13), Bill Anders (Apollo 8), Frank Bormann (Apollo 8), Ken Mattingly (Apollo 13, Apollo 16 ), Rusty Schweikart (Apollo 9) and Tom Stafford (Gemini 6, Gemini 9, Apollo 10, ASTP).

Thank you for sharing your memories.

Tom: Thank you for your donation. It is greatly appreciated, even more so in that the donations this year still remain behind the amount I had earned up to this point last year. It gives me hope I might still earn the same in 2023 as in 2022.