Exploring the past, present, and future of space.

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.…

In June 1964, a young engineer named Gary Wayne Johnson packed his wife, their belongings, and their dreams into a VW Bug and drove to Houston. “That was about all we owned,” he laughed. “I’d just graduated from Oklahoma State. I changed my major from chemical to electrical engineering because I wanted to work in…