.jpg)
Now that the MythBusters have officially proven that the NASA moon landings were not a hoax, (not that we had any doubts!), it's time to announce the next First 50 Honoree: Kipp Teague's Project Apollo Archive. Lovingly tended for almost ten years, the Archive and its companion websites offer the best all-purpose, all-topic space fan resource on the American lunar landing program in the galaxy.
As explained when Inside KSC was chosen as the original First 50 Honoree, the Space News Examiner award takes its name from the fact that NASA awards astronaut status to anyone who flies above 50 miles altitude. The First 50 will recognize those who rise well above the average in providing space resources.
The Project Apollo Archive, Teague says, "serves as an online reference source and repository of digital images" for the Apollo manned lunar landing program. But the site offers even more than images.
Teague offers multimedia files--including Apollo audio from the missions--and a deep, rich resource on the program's chronology, spacecraft, and landing sites. He's also added some other great resources to the Project's orbit, including reliable and reputable space memorabilia collections.
The satellite projects include the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal, presented by Eric M. Jones and Ken Glover, and Teague's own Contact Light personal retrospective of the Apollo program. Jones, Glover and Teague all give us personal insight into their lifelong passions for space exploration.
Long admired by space program cognoscenti, the Project Apollo Archive stands as a testament to what one person, fueled with passion and knowledge, can do to share information in a lively, entertaining way. Teague explains part of his own personal mission statement:
"..the Apollo program provided a generation with a technical challenge and unifying source of inspiration unlike anything in recent human history, and will most likely remain unmatched in this regard for the foreseeable future. Many like myself owe their choice of technical, scientific and engineering careers at least partly to the inspiration of Apollo. More importantly, with Apollo, our 300,000-year-old species at long last broke the bonds of the Earth and took its first "giant leap" into the Universe.
For those of you who were there in 1969, I hope you enjoyed this nostalgic look back at Project Apollo. For those not around or too young to recall, I hope "Contact Light" has given you some sense of what you missed, and here is hoping that we will all again be witness in our lifetimes to an achievement as grand, as glorious and as significant."
Congratuations to Kipp Teague and his colleagues for creating their own glorious signposts in space.