I followed a pointer from Scoble to the Apollo Image Gallery at the Project Apollo Archive. This is a fabulous online archive of photos from the first manned US space flights through the last Apollo mission, including:
- The original seven astronauts
- The “Freedom 7” launch carrying Alan Shepard into space
- Ed White performing the first US space walk during Gemini 4
- The tragic fire that cost the lives of Ed White, Gus Grissom, and Roger Chaffee during a training session for Apollo I at Pad 34
- Apollo 10, on which the command module was “Charlie Brown” and the lander was “Snoopy” (prompting some fabulous publicity photos (see above) and a classic Peanuts strip)—see also this interesting discussion about the “Silver Snoopy” quality award that was instituted to get the program back on track after the Apollo 1 disaster
- An enormous set of photos from Apollo 11, the first manned landing on the moon
- Apollo 13, the mission that inspired the movie
- And all the rest of the missions through Apollo 17 in 1972
It’s tremendous to see this archive of photos, many of which I’ve grown up with, become available on line. It’s also a bit sad. On the day I was born in 1972, the Apollo 17 crew was just getting ready to start the final manned mission. I was barely two weeks old when the crew splashed down into the Pacific Ocean. In the intervening 31-plus years, man hasn’t left Earth orbit.
(I can’t link directly to the images in the archive at present because it’s been overwhelmed with traffic and is temporarily being mirrored offsite.)