Atlas-Agena

My first recollection of space travel was Apollo 8, for some reason there was a lot of excitement and press coverage at the time (first around the Moon ?). That interest was increased after being given Waddington's Blast-off! game, exploring the challenges of space flight with a piece of card and some plastic rockets !

Then very early one morning in 1969 I was woken up by my Dad and we sat if front of the Black and White TV to watch a man in a spacesuit step on to the moon....amazing. I did not realise just how amazing until I finally got a chance to visit the Kennedy Space Center 20 years later. In the Rocket Garden were a collection of rockets of the era, seeing these machines up close you realise they are giant tin cans .... how they ever got into space and be controlled by primitive computers is mind boggling.

This Atlas-Agena probably preceeded the Apollo Saturn rocket by only about 4 years, the injenuity and bravery of the people who designed, built and flew these rockets throughout the 60's is something to admire, to stand by some of them in the Rocket Garden, even after a 20 year wait, is really something special.