Instructor: Ed Buckbee

Since the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing is July 20, 2019, the focus of this class will be on America’s Mercury 7 astronauts–Alan Shepherd, Gus Grissom, John Glenn, Scott Carpenter, Wally Schirra, Gordon Cooper and Deke Slayton–who volunteered in the late 1950’s to be the first to explore the unknown perils of spaceflight. The class will feature fascinating firsthand accounts of the competition, controversies, training, and hard work that took these seven individuals a step beyond their former lives as cocky military pilots and led them to blaze a trail into the unknown.

Additionally, the course will expose the story of how Wernher von Braun and his team of German rocket scientists developed the technology to propel men and materials into space and of the 12 brave moonwalkers, including how the Russian cosmonauts and the Chinese “Talkonauts” helped fuel the competitive space race.