Before the Moon Blog
Exploring the past, present, and future of space.
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When Apollo 11 touched down on the Moon, millions watched history unfold. Dr. Lawrence Kuznetz was not watching from home. He was on console. He had not expected to be there. When he arrived at NASA in 1967, he was given a problem that did not exist in textbooks. Model the human body inside a…
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In this episode of Future Tech, I sit down with Blue Origin space explorer Jason Stansell, crew member of Mission NS-37, to break down what spaceflight really teaches you about preparation, risk, teamwork, and perspective. Jason shares what it’s like training for space, flying above Earth, and returning with a completely different view of fear,…
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When Ralph Anderson joined NASA, he didn’t know he would one day design a device that could save a drifting astronaut’s life. “I started out as a junior engineer working for Lockheed,” he said. “We built flight crew equipment for the Space Shuttle—a switch panel called L-1011. I couldn’t believe they were going to entrust…
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When Jerry Ross launched aboard the Space Shuttle for the first time, he was not just fulfilling a childhood dream. He was stepping into a role that would make him one of NASA’s most accomplished astronauts. With seven spaceflights, Ross remains the joint record holder for the most missions in human history. His hands built…
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When people think about the space program, they imagine rockets, astronauts, and launchpads in Florida or Texas. What they rarely picture is a chemical engineering laboratory in eastern Pennsylvania, where fundamental questions about materials, gravity, and matter were being asked decades ago. Yet that is exactly where Mohamed S. El-Aasser built a career that quietly…
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One Small Step… for a Camera? When Neil Armstrong descended the ladder of the Lunar Module and made that legendary first step on the Moon, millions of people watched it live on television. The image of Armstrong’s boot touching lunar dust is one of the most iconic in human history. But few people ever ask:…
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What really keeps astronauts alive when the engineering stops being the hardest part? When most of us think about spaceflight, we picture roaring rockets, glowing control panels, and heroic last-minute fixes. But during my recent podcast conversation with Al Holland, I was reminded that the most fragile system in space is not mechanical. It is…
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In the early 1950s, inside a restricted Cold War research facility in Warminster, Pennsylvania, a young biophysicist began work that would quietly reshape aviation safety and aerospace medicine. Her name was Alice Stoll. She did not arrive as a test subject, a novelty, or a symbol. She arrived as a scientist, recruited for her expertise…
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Before Silicon Valley became synonymous with American innovation, there was a different kind of creative energy radiating from a quiet base in Warminster, Pennsylvania. Inside its hangars and labs, engineers, scientists, and technicians were redefining the limits of aviation, communication, and computing. One of them was Doug Crompton—a radio engineer, inventor, and ham radio enthusiast…
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When Joe D. Gamble joined NASA in 1963, the U.S. hadn’t yet reached the Moon—and the space center he was hired to work at didn’t even exist. “When I first entered NASA in 1963,” he said, “we didn’t have Johnson Space Center yet. We were working out of apartments on the Gulf Freeway in Houston.…