Fifty one years ago today, NASA held a Press Conference and the guest of honor was Alan B. Shepard, whose spaceflight on May 5th 1961, made history as the first U.S. Astronaut in Space.

A momentous occasion and a huge boost in our sagging morale, after hearing of the Soviet launch of Yuri Gagarin into space earlier. The Cold War period Space Race was on and there was determination to get to the moon before 1970.

Here is that Press Conference complete, as broadcast over CBS Radio on May 8th 1961.

Fifty years ago today, just about every kid in every school around the country was herded into an auditorium, or had a TV or radio carted into their classroom and sat, glued to the spectacle going on in front of them for the better part of that day. Nothing else went on, it wasn't business as usual. We were busy witnessing something.

I'd like to say it seemed like yesterday but no, it really does seem like fifty years ago. John Glenn and his apt named space capsule Friendship 7 were doing something we only imagined before this day and it was borne out of that curiosity that was so prevalent in the Post-World War 2 era and The New Frontier of the Kennedy Years. Part of it was a result of the Cold War and our desire to be Number One in All Things Adventuresome. But most of it really was doing something that just hadn't been done before. Those of us who had our heads buried in the latest Science Fiction book or TV show or magazine article just thought it was the next logical step in Art versus Reality.

We were primed for this for a while. Ever since Alan Shepherd the year before, we knew it was only a matter of time. But there was also that thing in the back of our heads that asked "what if it goes wrong? What it if explodes? What if he's stuck up there?". We didn't really know what to expect.

But enough time has passed and enough discoveries have been made so we can now look at this particular day, unfolding long before most readers were born and shrug "not that big a deal". Hindsight is a lot more confident than the reality of the moment. And at that moment in 1962 the uncertainty prompted an otherwise staid announcer to yell "Go Baby, Go!", triggering an excited squeal from my elementary school auditorium and an admonishment from the school Principal that the TV would be turned off if we didn't calm down.

And that's how history presented itself on this day in 1962. The uncertainty of the future and the excitement of the possibilities. Even a Fifth Grader knew that.

Here is an excerpt of that day recapped via an NBC Radio Special report for February 20, 1962.

This day 50 years ago the Space Race heated up. Hot on the heels of the Soviet accomplishment, sending their first astronaut (Cosmonaut) Yuri Gagarin into space in April, America quickly followed suit by sending Alan Shepard, America's first astronaut into space.

Here is the sound of the launch from May 5, 1961 and the first Press Conference Shepard delivered on May 8th where he recapped the flight to an overflow crowd of reporters.

A large page of history was made on this day and space became the biggest thing on peoples minds.

. . .and if you don't mind . .

If you haven't already heard about it repeatedly, today is the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Shuttle Challenger disaster. January 28, 1986 - routine by all accounts and then shocking. Shocking I suppose because like most everyone, I took the Shuttle program somewhat for granted. We had such a success rate over the years that the idea of one blowing up seemed remote. But that assumption is what gets us in trouble every time, taking things for granted. After the first several Shuttle launches, I admit to not paying a whole lot of attention when another one went up. It all settled into routine. So of course, it would never occur to me that one would actually blow up - and blow up the way it did. So on that day, that January 28th it was time for a reality check.

Like everyone else I knew, I stood frozen over the TV as the footage of the explosion was played over and over again. Horrifying and spectacular by the surrealism of it all. Reminded of the Hindenburg disaster and the footage from that - the enormous dirigible exploding in the sky and the terror-stricken reporter screaming "Oh, the humanity!" Yes indeed. . . the humanity.

So here is a clip from that day as a reminder.

Forty-eight years ago this week, on September 12, 1962 President Kennedy pledged to put a man on the Moon by the end of the decade. After a tour of the Houston Space facilities he addressed the students at Rice University.

Pres. Kennedy: “We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.”

Yes, we're capable of that too - lately, it's been easy to forget.

(James Hansen - shouldering the somewhat weighty burden of Grandfather of Global Warming)

I ran across this interview, conducted last week by Radio France International for their overseas English program Voices. Dr. James Hansen discusses the issue of Global Warming and why there are so many who dispute it and why (I can think of a few). The fact of the matter is, Global Warming is very real and very much upon us and we are heading straight towards catastrophe if we don't change the way we are living and consuming. That some dispute it means they have been listening an awful lot to information being doled out by Big Oil or they think Global Warming is akin to Science Fiction and the stuff of really terrible movies.

Dr. James Hansen: “I thought initially it was so logical . . . that the science was so logical that once we made this story clear that governments would take the right actions. But what I found is that government will say the right words; The Planet in Peril. But their actions don’t correspond to that. And I think in part it is due to the fact that the fossil fuel industry has a tremendous influence on governments world wide. So that’s why I try to get the public involved because, unless the public begins to put pressure, a lot of pressure on governments, it’s just not going to happen. So getting arrested at a mountaintop removal site was an example of trying to draw attention. It doesn’t make sense to cut off the top of mountains to get at the last shards of coal because we’re going to have to get that Co2 out of the atmosphere somehow. So it just doesn’t make sense.”

As our society is enthralled with the concept of "Instant", it's difficult to convince people that any gradual change the earth is going through can be anything but catastrophic because we only respond to cataclysm and not much else.

But by the time it gets cataclysmic it will certainly be too late.