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Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland 20771

ENGINEERING COLLOQUIUM

Monday, January 23, 2017 / 3:30 PM, Building 3 Auditorium

Cover of book "Calculated Risk"
 Photo credit: Purdue University Press

George Leopold

"Calculated Risk: The Supersonic Life and Times of Gus Grissom"

ABSTRACT -- Virgil "Gus" Grissom was one of the original seven Mercury astronauts. He also flew in the first manned Gemini mission. He was in training to command the first Apollo mission when his life was ended by the fire which also killed fellow astronauts Ed White and Roger Chaffee.

Unlike other astronauts, "Gus" Grissom never had a chance to write his memoirs. This talk will be based on the speaker's new biography of Grissom, which puts his career in the context of the Cold War and of manned spaceflight.

SPEAKER -- George Leopold has been working as a technology journalist and science writer since the mid-1980's, covering the connections between technology and policy. As a child growing up in Wisconsin, he watched the Apollo missions on TV. As an adult, he has written extensively about Apollo and later U.S. manned spaceflight. His work has appeared in the New York Times, the New Scientist, and a variety of other science and technology publications. Calculated Risk: The Supersonic Life and Times of Gus Grissom is his first book. He resides in Reston, Virginia.



Engineering Colloquium home page: https://ecolloq.gsfc.nasa.gov