Gemini 12 spacecraft seen during EVA

I’m a complete space junkie. If it lifts off, splashes down, glides in, orbits, docks, I love it. Now I love Mr. Colberg even more after he published a link to the Project Apollo Archive, an expansive project of unedited scans and complete Hasselblad magazines prepared by Kipp Teague from the entire (and pre and post) Apollo missions in the teenage years of our space program. How did I not know this?!

Plus I would have posted this a lot earlier if I just had the inclination to move from the couch while watching the Lord of the Rings (sad, I know) trilogy marathon on TNT this weekend. I even glossed over the closing ceremony from the Olympics (it looked better in pictures) to see for the umpteenth time if Frodo actually throws the ring in the fiery river he doesn’t, the selfish jerk.

Okay so a scrutinizing viewer would look at the first photo and rightfully say: that’s not even an Apollo photograph! You’re right, but the archive has pre-Apollo images and this image was the first in the archive that tugged at my visual and emotional sweetspot; that the power of photography takes me right to the scene and impress upon me similar if not the same feelings the astronaut must have felt when he stepped foot off the spacecraft into the vacuum of space.

[NASA Astronaut Neil] Armstrong’s first photo after setting foot on the Moon.

The beautiful facet of this project is seeing the images “in between” the iconic images that we have seen repeated in history textbooks, NASA promotional materials, stupid advertisements, and other outlets. The image above is from Armstrong’s first photograph on the moon.

[NASA Astronaut Jack] Schmitt stands beside the flag in what is likely the last photograph of an Apollo astronaut on the Moon. [ed note: it appears to be the last photograph taken from another astronaut on the surface as well]

Will I live to see the next manned mission to the moon? I hopefully think so, and Mars would be an extra bonus. Certainly you’ll find me watching the launch of the new generation of rockets once they retire the Space Shuttle in 2010. Poor old rickety thing.