Growing Up in the Space Age: Summer Vacations of the ‘70s

Whenever the hot weather finally arrives in New England, some of my thoughts during idle moments turn towards memories of summer vacations from school when I was growing up during the 1970s in Lowell, Massachusetts. For a young space enthusiast and scientist like myself with lots of free time to fill, space-related activities were frequently an important part of my summers. Among my earliest memories was watching live television coverage of a Gemini launch when I was about four years old (see “When I Thought My Dad Was an Astronaut”). These bits of reality combined a steady diet of space-themed kid’s television shows in the late-60s fed my interest in spaceflight over the next few years.

My first clear memory of a historical event took place during the summer of 1969 with NASA’s Apollo 11 mission. I was well-aware of the buildup to this historic mission despite being just seven years old (or maybe because of it) and was well prepared with a map of the Moon from the February 1969 issue of National Geographic (which also included an illustrated article on the Apollo 8 mission) along with a wall chart I had acquired showing each step of the lunar landing mission. I watched the live television coverage of the launch on Wednesday morning of July 16 and distinctly recall watching the landing on TV the following Sunday afternoon. Most memorable of all, my parents let me stay up well past my normal bedtime to watch live coverage of the first Moon walk. While I fell asleep not too long after Neil Armstrong first set foot on the Moon at 10:56 PM EDT, the event capped what was just the first of many summer vacations with memorable space-related activities.

1970

The Golden Nature Guide, Stars, was the second space-related book I owned.

With no Apollo missions scheduled for the summer of 1970 (and a delay in future launches as a result of the Apollo 13 accident the previous April), my space-related TV viewing that year was limited to watching reruns of Lost in Space and similar kid-oriented scifi shows. But at eight years of age, I began taking an interest in books especially for the pictures. My first space book was Isaac Asimov’s Space Dictionary published by Scholastic Books which I bought through school earlier in the year. During our family’s annual camping vacation, my parents bought me my second space book at a gift shop at New Hampshire’s Old Man of the Mountain: Stars: A Guide to the Constellations, Sun Moon, Planets and other Feature of the Heavens, part of the Golden Nature Guide series.

Almost as memorable for me was the August 1970 issue of National Geographic with its painting of a view of Saturn from the surface of Titan on the cover – a neat revelation that there was a moon with an atmosphere (see “Voyager 1: The First Close Encounter with Titan“). Inside was the article “Voyage to the Planets” which described NASA’s future plans to explore all the planets of the solar system in the years to come. Filled with excellent paintings of planetary landscapes by the Czech-born artist, Luděk Pešek, what grabbed my imagination were the plans to explore all the outer planets from Jupiter to Pluto (which was still considered a planet then) as part of NASA’s proposed Grand Tour mission. But with the first launch seven years away (an eternity to an eight year old) and the final target of the program not to be reached until eleven years after that, there were other space missions to watch in the meantime.

1971

The cover of the July 1971 issue of National Geographic.

The summer of 1971 started with the arrival of the July issue of National Geographic which included a heavily illustrated article on the Apollo 14 mission which I had followed the previous February. More importantly, the summer of 1971 gave me my first chance to see almost all the live television coverage of an Apollo lunar landing mission since Apollo 11 during the summer of 1969. It started at 9:34 AM EDT on Monday, July 26 with the coverage of the launch of Apollo 15. Over the following days, I tried to watch all of the scheduled telecasts and combed magazines and the local newspaper for articles on the mission – a habit I started in earnest earlier in the year with the Apollo 14 mission clipping any and all space-related articles I could find (and a habit I would continue for another decade and a half).

I still recall an incident while watching television coverage of the third EVA on Monday, August 2. My younger brother insisted that we had watch enough “space stuff” and kept changing the channel to watch The Three Stooges. My mother interceded on my behalf telling my brother, “you can watch the Stooges any time, this is a historic event.” By far the coolest part of the mission for me as a nine year old was the television coverage of the launch of the LM from the lunar surface at 1:11 PM on Monday via the Lunar Rover Vehicle left behind on the Moon. I also distinctly recall watching the coverage of the splashdown on Saturday afternoon of August 7 when one of the three parachutes of the CM failed to open properly (see “NASA’s Apollo 15 Mission: A Kid’s View from 1971“). For the rest of the summer I reenacted parts of the Apollo 15 mission with my friends using my Star Team space helmet and other astronaut regalia I owned at the time. I even dreamed of building my own CM mockup to play in like the one I had seen the previous spring during a school field trip to the Boston Museum of Science (see “Plans for a Command Module of My Own”). What I did not appreciate at the time was that this would be my last summer watching an Apollo lunar mission.

1972

My first NASA pamphlet from 1972 about the new Space Shuttle.

With my father taking a temporary work assignment in Kingston, New York, the summer of 1972 was dominated by moving to a rented farmhouse overlooking the Hudson River and exploring the surrounding countryside. Not long after arriving (and with all my “space stuff” back at the family home in Lowell where we would return in six months), however, I finally sat down and used the new letter writing skills I had learned during the previous school year in fourth grade to write a letter to Kennedy Space Center. I had gotten the address off a NASA educational poster about the upcoming Skylab program that my fourth-grade teacher, Miss Loiselle, had given to me at the end of the school year. Not only did I get some pamphlets and photos from NASA later that summer on the recent Apollo and upcoming Skylab missions, I also received a publication about the newly approved Space Shuttle. I had read about the Space Shuttle for the first time in a nearly-full page article published in the local newspaper the previous February. What got my creative juices going at the age of ten was the thought that the Space Shuttle would be able to launch payloads into orbit for $100 per pound opening the prospects that I could build my own satellite and have the shuttle place it into orbit (see “The Space Shuttle and the Dreams of a Ten Year Old”). My summer was spent looking over my new acquisitions from NASA (where I would write to dozens of times in the decade to follow) as well as making my first sketches of my satellite and figuring out what it would do and how.

1973

Even before the summer of 1973 formally began, NASA launched the Skylab 2 mission on May 26 to repair the Skylab workshop damaged during its launch. Although I was in school on that Friday before the Memorial Day long weekend, my father was thoughtful enough to record the audio of the launch’s TV coverage on cassette tape for me to enjoy later (see “SA-206: The Odyssey of a Saturn IB”). I devoured all the coverage about the Skylab 2 mission during my last weeks of fifth grade culminating with splashdown on June 22 just as school vacation was starting. The launch of Skylab 3 early Saturday morning of July 28 was, much to my disappointment, followed by barely a mention on TV or in the local newspaper of this mission – spaceflight was not generating as much interest with the public as it had in the past. What articles I saw on the mission centered on the RCS propellant leak issue in the Apollo ferry and contingency plans to launch a rescue mission. Fortunately, the rescue was not needed and the Skylab 3 crew finished their 59-day mission on September 25 when I had already started sixth grade.

1974

Just as summer vacation was about to arrive, we received the May issue of National Geographic which contained the article “The Incredible Universe” which discussed the latest advances in astrophysics. During that summer I received my first package of literature and photos from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). Included were publications about NASA’s Mariner 10 mission which had performed the first flyby of Mercury the previous March with plans for a second flyby in September. These publications gave me far more details on the Mariner 10 mission than I had from local news coverage and got me up to speed on the latest science about Venus and Mercury – well, as up to speed as a 12-year-old can get..

A mosaic of images acquired by NASA’s Mariner 10 during the in bound approach of its flyby of Mercury in March 1974. (NASA/JPL)

Also included in the package was some early NASA literature about the upcoming Viking mission scheduled to land on Mars in just two years’ time. While I had been vaguely aware of Viking earlier, my interest and enthusiasm soared after receiving the package from JPL as well as watching a summer rerun of an episode of the then-new PBS science show, Nova, entitled “The Search for Life”. I became a regular viewer of Nova from that point onward for the next couple of decades which helped to broaden my scientific interests beyond things space-related – something my sixth grade teacher, Mrs. Metcalf, had been trying to do all year.

1975

Like so many earlier summers, this one began with the June issue of National Geographic with an article about the Mariner 10 mission entitled “Flight to Venus and Mercury”. But the real thrill of the summer was the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP) starting with live TV coverage on Tuesday morning, July 15 of the launch of Soyuz 19 (a first for all audiences around the globe) followed by the Apollo launch later that afternoon. I spent most of the following Thursday watching news coverage of the docking of Apollo and Soyuz followed by the first international handshake in orbit between Tom Stafford and Alexei Leonov three hours later. All the information available about this part of the otherwise secretive Soviet space program began my interest in the subject which continues to this day.

But as the Apollo program was finally coming to an end, I was also looking forward to the future. During the previous school year in 7^th grade, I had taken a life sciences class (my only formal education on the subject, as it would turn out) at the same time I was receiving educational material from NASA on the life detection experiments designed for Viking. With the launch of Viking 1 on August 20 followed three weeks later by Viking 2 (during my first full week of classes in 8^th grade), I was looking forward to the first Mars landing scheduled for the nation’s bicentennial celebration the next summer.

1976

The cover of one of my many paperback collections of Isaac Asimov’s nonfiction science essays from the 1970s.

By the time the summer of 1976 rolled around, I had started subscribing to Sky & Telescope (which I still do after over four decades) – a vital monthly source of information about astronomy and spaceflight in the age before the internet. I had also finally taken an interest in reading, as opposed to looking at pictures and reading captions or short passages from a book. As the summer unfolded, my favorite author was Isaac Asimov. But it wasn’t his award-winning science fiction that interested me, it was the paperback collections of his science essays that grabbed my interest and started me reading about physics, chemistry and biology as well as space. At the same time, my interests in science was kindled further by my 8^th grade Earth sciences teacher, Mr. L’Herault, who encouraged me not only while he was my teacher, but as a mentor during my early high school years.

By far the most exciting space event for the summer of 1976 (in an already exciting Bicentennial summer) was the Viking mission to Mars. Viking 1 entered orbit around Mars on June 19 just as summer vacation was about to begin. I voraciously read everything I could about the mission and watched all the television news coverage as the mission prepared for an Independence Day touchdown to commemorate the American bicentennial. Unfortunately, the original landing site proved to be too rough forcing a delay until July 20 – the 7^th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing. I clearly recall having to get up at 6 AM that Tuesday morning to catch the beginning of news coverage – a fairly tough thing for a 14-year old night owl to do in the middle of summer vacation. But it was worth it. I got to watch the events at mission control in JPL as Viking 1 made the first fully successful landing on Mars. Not long afterwards, I witnessed the reception of the first image of Viking’s footpad being returned one column of pixels at a time (see “First Pictures: Viking 1 on Mars – July 20, 1976“).

Here is the first image of the surface of Mars returned by the Viking 1 lander shortly after arriving on July 20, 1976. (NASA/JPL)

The remainder of the summer of 1976, at least as far as my space interests were concerned, were centered on watching television specials about the Viking mission and the results of its life detection experiments. Unfortunately, those experiments returned ambiguous results which are still debated even today (see “Viking and The Question of Life on Mars – Part 1” and “Part 2”). Viking 2, which slipped into Martian orbit on August 7 and landed on September 3, did not help to resolve the question, unfortunately. In the meantime, the June issue of Sky & Telescope had a feature article about the new Space Shuttle and its upcoming missions. And on September 17 – the end of my first full week of my freshman year of high school – NASA rolled out the Space Shuttle Enterprise with the cast of my favorite scifi show, Star Trek, present. The “future” was getting closer all the time.

Gene Roddenberry and the cast of the original Star Trek series in front of the Space Shuttle Enterprise during its roll out on September 17, 1976. (NASA)

1977

Promotional poster for Star Wars from its original release in 1977.

The summer of 1977 was notable to me for a couple of reasons: First was the release of the original Star Wars movie on May 25 (known today as Star Wars Episode IV: The New Hope). I didn’t see it for the first time until mid-June but was instantly hooked. The local cinema had $2 afternoon matinees for Star Wars for the duration of that hot summer and I must have seen the movie over a dozen times (as much to spend a couple of hours in the air conditioning as to see the movie). Oh, and Han did shoot first, by the way.

Back in the real world, NASA had commenced flight testing of the Space Shuttle Enterprise starting with taxiing then unmanned captive tests on the back of its 747 carrier in February. Captive flights with a crew on board started on June 18. The first free flight came on August 12 which I watched live on TV. Four more free flights followed in September and October after I had started my sophomore year of high school. In the meantime, I was reading all I could about the Voyager mission. I had developed a keen interest in the Galilean moons of Jupiter based on the findings of the Pioneer 10 and 11 missions (further amplified by my regular telescope observations of these easy-to-observe targets). With the Voyager launches on August 20 and September 5, I knew I would get a good look at these worlds in just a couple more years.

1978

The summer of 1978 was a busy one for me filled with anticipation. I had started my first “real” part-time job in July and was saving up to take driving lessons so I could get my license. I was also anticipating the findings of the new missions launched to Venus. NASA’s Pioneer Venus Orbiter and Multiprobe spacecraft had been launched on May 20 and on August 8, respectively (see “NASA’s Unintentional Venus Lander“). I was looking forward most of all to seeing the first global radar maps of Venus using the Orbiter’s radar. And with the launch of Venera 11 and 12 on September 9 and 14 as I was beginning my junior year, I was hoping to see yet more images of the surface of Venus like those returned by Venera 9 and 10 in 1975 (see “Venera 9 and 10 to Venus”).

An artist’s depiction of the Pioneer Venus Large Probe deploying its parachute during the descent through the atmosphere of Venus. (NASA)

1979

My last summer of the 1970s was also my last one as a high school student as I was about to enter my senior year. In June, Sky & Telescope had a detailed feature article on the results of the Voyager 1 flyby of Jupiter the previous March. This was an excellent set up for the Voyager 2 flyby of Jupiter on July 9 which I followed carefully in the newspapers and via my new subscription to the weekly Science News (a great source for news before the internet which I still subscribe to). This event was followed by the Pioneer 11 flyby of Saturn on September 1 which provided the first closeup observations of this ringed world.

This is a Voyager 2 view of the southern hemisphere of Jupiter and one of its Galilean moons, Io, which had recently been discovered to be volcanically active and covered in sulfur deposits. (NASA/JPL)

As I was looking forward to the Voyager encounters with Saturn and beyond in the years to come, that summer had a bit of disappointment. Because of the ongoing delays with the Space Shuttle, a hoped for mission to save Skylab could not be launched before the old space station finally reentered the atmosphere on July 11 over seven years after I had first heard about the mission. Despite the loss, I still held out a lot of hope for the future of space exploration.

Afterwards

After graduating from high school in June of 1980, the nature of my summer vacations changed as I took up extra summer jobs in addition to my regular part time job at a neighborhood pharmacy to pay for tuition and other expenses as I earned a degree in physics from the University of Lowell (now UMass – Lowell). Still, I did have time for some space-related fun during those summers. During the summer of 1980, I read Planetary Encounters: The Future of Unmanned Spaceflight by Robert Powers (along with more Asimov and Sagan) which not only summarized planetary missions to date but also missions planned for the 1980s and beyond (see “The Future That Never Came: Planetary Missions of the 1980s – Part I” and “Part II”). The summer of 1981 brought the Voyager 2 encounter with Saturn on August 26. I also made my first trip to Kennedy Space Center that July (see “A Tour of Kennedy Space Center – July 1981“). During the summer of 1982 I followed the details of the long duration missions on Salyut 7 and other Soviet space activities in magazines like Aviation Week & Space Technology available in the university library. At this same time I started seeking out books specializing on the details of the Soviet space program by Nicholas Johnson and James Oberg whose articles I had seen in now long-gone magazines like Omni. During the summer of 1983, I started making inquiries about participating in the Amateur Space Telescope project (see “Vintage Micro: The Amateur Space Telescope”). While the nature of my summer vacations changed once I graduated college and started working full time (frequently doing space-related work), I still look back fondly to those long summer vacations from school during the 1970s.

Here I am at the age of 19 sitting in front of an H-1 engine during my first visit to Kennedy Space Center in July 1981.

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For more articles on missions of this era, see this site’s 1970s page.