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Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland 20771

ENGINEERING COLLOQUIUM

Monday, January 23, 2006 / 3:30 PM, Building 3 Auditorium

Ed Buckbee

"Von Braun and the Saturn"

ABSTRACT -- Ed Buckbee introduces the multi-faceted Von Braun, the master architect of America's manned space program; the man who made dreams come true while letting others see the stars from a vantage point he himself had hoped to one day share. In Von Braun, Buckbee provides insight about a man who committed--heart and soul--to living in a new frontier. His words, "late to bed, early to rise, work like hell and advertise," aptly described his approach to securing his dream. Von Braun, the rocket scientist and visionary of space flight, convinced presidents and congressmen to spend millions exploring space for peaceful purposes. Von Braun's eloquence and resolve were renowned and unrelenting, even after landing man on the moon.

Buckbee takes you through the events leading into the U.S. manned space flight program and tours NASA with President John F. Kennedy, who challenged the nation to land man on the moon within the decade. Feel the collective will of a nation to defeat the Russians in an all-out space race via an American team of 400,000 scientists, engineers, astronauts and technicians who performed as if the country were at war. He describes the mood and the efforts of those building and testing the mammoth Saturn V moon rocket that launched the Apollo astronauts to the moon. "You couldn't go anywhere in a NASA building in those days and not hear three words,'...Man...Moon...Decade.' To watch a Saturn booster test firing was the ultimate fire and smoke show. Generating 7 1/2 million pounds of thrust--equivalent to 160 million horsepower--thousands came to watch and marvel at the immense power of this enormous man-made machine."

SPEAKER -- Ed Buckbee, an author, lecturer, space expert, and Space Camp director emeritus, has been associated with the U.S. space program for four decades.

After graduating from West Virginia University, Buckbee entered the US Army, serving as an officer at U. S. Army Missile Command, Redstone Arsenal, at Hunstville, Alabama. When NASA was formed, he joined the Marshall Space Flight Center, working under Wernher von Braun. As a NASA public affairs officer, he worked with all the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo astronauts.

In 1970, Buckbee was selected by Von Braun to be the first director of the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville. There, he assembled and managed the world's largest space and rocket exhibition and founded the U.S. Space Camp and Aviation Challenge programs. Buckbee has opened similar Space Camps in Japan, Belgium, Italy, and Canada. Over 500,000 students and teachers from seventy countries have attended the programs he has developed. Since retiring from the Space & Rocker Center in 1994, Buckbee has continued to promote education in emerging technology as a way of maintaining US leadership in human space exploration and global technology.

A past president of the NASA Alumni-Huntsville, Buckbee's awards include the NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal, Department of Army Distinguished Civilian Service Award, Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Medal, National Space Club Media Award, and Jimmy Doolittle Award. He has trained with U.S. astronauts in NASA simulators and Russian cosmonauts at Star City. He is one of the few foreigners to have visited China's manned space flight facilities. He was technical advisor on the movie Space Camp. His publications include "The REAL Space Cowboys," a tribute to the Mercury astronauts, co-written with Wally Schirra.




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