#TIL that engineers had issues with the honeycomb insulation on the #SaturnV second stage, so they ended up hiring local surfers from #SealBeach CA, who had experience in working with the material, to apply it to the vehicle 🚀🏄 @NASAhistory The challenging area was the Stage Two (S-II) common bulkhead on #SaturnV, where the LH2 and LO2 tanks shared a common interface (see center of image)

L-28 days @BlueOrigin #NewShepard #FHF 🚀👩‍🚀

Figured it might be fun to share some fun facts along the way…

#DYK Alan Shepard carried a $1 bill on his Mercury flight? Do you know WHY? (It’s way more interesting…) Just 3 weeks prior to Alan Shepard’s historic flight for the US, Yuri Gagarin had made history as the first human in space…

But at that time…

Official recognition for the Soviet Union was still being WITHHELD by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI) 🙅‍♂️

This is what happens to aluminum when hit by a 1/2 oz (~14g) piece of plastic going 15,000 mph (~24000 km/h) in space 💥

#Hypervelocity 👆 shows the violence a little piece of orbiting space debris can wreak on a spacecraft 🛰

#Hypervelocity

Growing up, I heard there was a secret "NASA" rocket testing facility in northern Nevada (home for me), but I never knew what it was. Today, I finally found out... Thanks to @Erdayastronaut, while digging into aerospike engine history, he came across this test site in Nevada called the "Nevada Field Laboratory" (NFL) which is tucked away between Reno, NV and Pyramid Lake 📍 Map: maps.apple.com/?address=Reno,…

Reading some @NASAhistory, and was curious who this was... Her name is Poppy Northcutt, and she's the first female engineer to work in Mission Control at @NASA_Johnson #Apollo8.

Finally got to watch @apollo11movie and was curious who this was... Her name is JoAnn Morgan, and she was the only woman inside the control room at the historic launch of #Apollo11 in 1969. A glimpse of her is seen in this documentary, but that’s only the beginning of her story.