1.
Ron Howard
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Ronald William Ron Howard is an American actor and filmmaker. Howard is best known for playing two roles in television sitcoms in his youth and directing a number of successful feature films later in his career. Howard first came to prominence playing young Opie Taylor in the sitcom The Andy Griffith Show for eight years, in 1980, Howard left Happy Days to focus on directing. His films include, the science-fiction/fantasy film Cocoon, the historical docudrama Apollo 13, the biographical drama A Beautiful Mind, in 2002, Howard narrated the Fox comedy series, Arrested Development, on which he would also serve as producer and play a semi-fictionalized version of himself. In 2003, Howard was awarded the National Medal of Arts, asteroid 12561 Howard is named after him. He was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame in 2013, Howard has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his contributions in the television and motion pictures industries. Howard was born in Duncan, Oklahoma, the son of Jean Speegle Howard, an actress, and Rance Howard, a director, a writer. He has German, English, Scottish, Irish, and Dutch ancestry and his father was born with the surname Beckenholdt, and had taken the stage name Howard by 1948, for his acting career. Rance Howard was serving three years in the United States Air Force at the time of Rons birth, the family moved to Hollywood in 1958, the year before the birth of his younger brother, Clint Howard. They rented a house on the south of the Desilu Studios. They lived in Hollywood for at least three years, before moving to Burbank, Howard was tutored at Desilu Studios in his younger years, and graduated from John Burroughs High School. He later attended the University of Southern Californias School of Cinematic Arts, Howard has said he knew from a young age he might want to go into directing thanks to his early experience as an actor. In 1959, Howard had his first credited role, in The Journey. Howard played Timmy in Counterfeit Gun, Season 4, Episode 2 of the TV series, in 1960, Howard was cast as Opie Taylor in The Andy Griffith Show. Credited as Ronny Howard, he portrayed the son of the character for all eight seasons of the show. He and Griffith remained close until Griffiths death nearly 45 years later, in the 1962 film version of The Music Man, Howard played Winthrop Paroo, the child with the lisp, the film starred Robert Preston and Shirley Jones. He also starred in the 1963 film The Courtship of Eddies Father and he appeared as Barry Stewart on The Eleventh Hour, in the episode Is Mr. Martian Coming Back. In the 1970s, he appeared in at least one episode of The Bold Ones, Howard appeared on the 1969 Disneyland Records album The Story and Song from the Haunted Mansion
2.
Brian Grazer
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Brian Thomas Grazer is an American film and television producer. He co-founded Imagine Entertainment in 1986, with Ron Howard, the films they produced have grossed over $13 billion. The movies include four for which Grazer was personally nominated for an Academy Award, Splash, Apollo 13, A Beautiful Mind and his films and TV series have been nominated for 43 Academy Awards, and 131 Emmys. In 2002, Grazer won an Oscar for Best Picture for A Beautiful Mind, in 2007, he was named one of Times 100 Most Influential People in the World. Grazer was born in Los Angeles, California, to Arlene Becker Grazer and he is the older brother of Nora Beth Grazer and actor/director Gavin Grazer. He was raised in Sherman Oaks and Northridge, in Los Angeless San Fernando Valley, Grazers mother is Jewish and his father was Catholic, and he described himself in 2000 as half-Jewish. Subsequently, third-party reports conflicted as to whether he was Jewish or a practicing Christian and his parents divorced when he was in high school. Grazer said My best buddy, the most important person in my growing up, was my little 4-foot-10 Jewish grandmother, no ones going to get it for you, Brian. Grazer won a scholarship to the University of Southern California as a psychology major and he graduated from USCs School of Cinema-Television in 1974. He then attended USC Law School for one year, but quit in 1975 to pursue a life in Hollywood, Grazer began his career as a producer developing television projects. While executive-producing TV pilots at Paramount Pictures in the early 1980s, he met current long-time friend and he produced his first feature-film, Night Shift, in 1982, directed by Howard. Grazer and Howard teamed up again for Splash in 1984, which Grazer produced, Splash earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay of 1984. In 1986, Grazer and Howard co-founded Imagine Entertainment, which one of Hollywoods most prolific. Over the years, Grazers films and TV shows have been nominated for a total of 43 Academy Awards, at the same time, his movies have generated more than $13.5 billion in worldwide theatrical, music, and video grosses. Grazers early film successes include Parenthood and Backdraft and he produced Apollo 13, for which he won the Producers Guild of America’s Daryl F. Zanuck Motion Picture Producer of the Year Award, as well as an Oscar nomination for Best Picture of 1995. In 1998, he earned two honors, he was given his own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In 2001, Grazer won an Academy Award for Best Picture for A Beautiful Mind, which took home Oscars for Best Supporting Actress, Best Director. In 2002, Grazers 8 Mile was released and it proved not only to be a huge box office hit, but also the first film with a rap song to win a Best Original Song Oscar, for Eminems Lose Yourself
3.
Jim Lovell
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James Arthur Jim Lovell Jr. Lovell was also the command module pilot of Apollo 8, the first Apollo mission to enter lunar orbit. He is a recipient of the Congressional Space Medal of Honor and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He is one of only 24 people to have flown to the Moon, Lovell was also the first person to fly in space four times. Born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1928, Lovell was the child of his mother Blanche, who was of Czech descent, and his father. For about two years, he and his mother resided with a relative in Terre Haute, Indiana and his mother then moved them to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he graduated from Juneau High School and became an Eagle Scout. As a child, Lovell was interested in rocketry, and built flying models, from the fall of 1946 to the spring of 1948, he attended the University of Wisconsin–Madison for two years under the Flying Midshipman program, where he joined the Alpha Phi Omega fraternity. While Lovell was attending pre-flight training in the summer of 1948, there were even worries that some or most of the pilots that graduated wouldnt have pilot billets to fill. He applied and was accepted to attend the United States Naval Academy in the fall of 1948 and he attended Annapolis for the full four years, graduating as an Ensign in the spring of 1952 with a B. S. degree. He then went to training at NAS Pensacola from October 1952 to February 1954. He married Marilyn Lillie Gerlach, the daughter of Lillie and Carl Gerlach, the two were high-school sweethearts at Juneau High School in Milwaukee. Marilyn initially was hesitant about dating Jim because he was two years older than she, but the two became inseparable after their first date. She transferred from Wisconsin State Teachers College to George Washington University in Washington D. C. so she could be near him while he was training in Annapolis and they married after his graduation from the Naval Academy on June 6,1952. They have four children, Barbara, James, Susan, due to her husband often being absent from the home because of training and missions, Marilyn was in charge of taking care of their household and four children. Their home life during the Apollo 13 mission of 1970 was portrayed in the 1995 film Apollo 13, Actress Kathleen Quinlan was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance as Marilyn Lovell. In 1999 the Lovell family opened Lovells of Lake Forest, a dining restaurant in Lake Forest. The restaurant displays many artifacts from Lovells time with NASA, as well as from the filming of Apollo 13 and his son James Jay Lovell III was the executive chef. He sold the restaurant to Jay and his wife Darice in 2006, the Lovell family announced that the restaurant building and surrounding property was on the market in February 2014. The restaurant closed on April 12,2015, and the property was auctioned on April 22,2015, upon completion of pilot training Lovell served at sea flying F2H Banshee night fighters from 1954 to 1957
4.
Jeffrey Kluger
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The latter work was the basis for Ron Howards film Apollo 13. He is also the author of two books for adults, Nacky Patcher and the Curse of the Dry-Land Boats and Freedom Stone. Kluger attended Pikesville High School in Pikesville, Maryland, a northwest suburb of Baltimore. He attended the University of Maryland and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in science in 1976, and the University of Baltimore Law School. He is an attorney, and was admitted to the state bar in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. From June 1992 to September 1996, Kluger was a writer for Discover magazine. He also worked as a writer and editor for the New York Times, Business World Magazine, Family Circle magazine, Kluger began his work with TIME in 1996 specializing in science coverage. He was named a senior writer in 1998, during his time at TIME magazine Kluger has written articles covering the Mars Pathfinder landing and the 2003 Columbia disaster. Kluger has taught journalism at New York University, Kluger has authored numerous books, most notably Lost Moon, The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13, with coauthor Jim Lovell. Lost Moon would become the basis for the Ron Howard film Apollo 13 starring Tom Hanks, Kluger would later be a technical consultant for, and appear in, the movie Apollo 13, The IMAX Experience. He also authored a number of books about the program including, Jeffrey Kluger. The Apollo Adventure, The Making of Apollo Space Program and the Movie Apollo 13, journey Beyond Selene, Remarkable Expeditions Past Our Moon and to the Ends of the Solar System. Moon Hunters, NASAs Remarkable Expeditions to the Ends of the Solar System, other topics Kluger has written about include, Jeffrey Kluger. Splendid Solution, Jonas Salk and the Conquest of Polio, Nacky Patcher & the Curse of the Dry-Land Boats. CS1 maint, Uses authors parameter Jeffrey Kluger, Simplexity, Why Simple Things Become Complex. The Sibling Effect, What the Bonds Among Brothers and Sisters Reveal About Us, klugers biography at TIME Magazines website Review of Simplexity at Letters On Pages
5.
Tom Hanks
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Thomas Jeffrey Hanks is an American actor and filmmaker. Hanks films have grossed more than $4.5 billion at U. S. and Canadian box offices and more than $9.0 billion worldwide, Hanks has been nominated for numerous awards during his career. In 2004, he received the Stanley Kubrick Britannia Award for Excellence in Film from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts. In 2014, he received a Kennedy Center Honor and, in 2016, he received a Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama, in 2010, Spielberg and Hanks were executive producers on the HBO miniseries The Pacific. Hanks was born in Concord, California, the son of Janet Marylyn, a worker, and Amos Mefford Hanks. His mother was of Portuguese descent, while his father had English ancestry. The familys three oldest children, Sandra, Larry and Tom, went with their father, while the youngest, Jim, in his childhood, his family moved often. By the age of ten, Hanks had lived in ten different houses, while Hanks family religious history was Catholic and Mormon, he has characterized himself as being a Bible-toting evangelical for several years as a teenager. In school, Hanks was unpopular with students and teachers alike, later telling Rolling Stone magazine, I was a geek, I was horribly, painfully, terribly shy. At the same time, I was the guy whod yell out funny captions during filmstrips, but I didnt get into trouble. I was always a good kid and pretty responsible. In 1965, his father married Frances Wong, a San Francisco native of Chinese descent, Frances had three children, two of whom lived with Hanks during his high school years. Hanks acted in plays, including South Pacific, while attending Skyline High School in Oakland. Hanks studied theater at Chabot College in Hayward, California, and transferred to California State University, Sacramento, Hanks told New York magazine in 1986, Acting classes looked like the best place for a guy who liked to make a lot of noise and be rather flamboyant. I spent a lot of going to plays. I wouldnt take dates with me, id just drive to a theater, buy myself a ticket, sit in the seat and read the program, and then get into the play completely. I spent a lot of time like that, seeing Brecht, Tennessee Williams, Ibsen, during his years studying theater, Hanks met Vincent Dowling, head of the Great Lakes Theater Festival in Cleveland, Ohio. At Dowlings suggestion, Hanks became an intern at the festival and his internship stretched into a three-year experience that covered most aspects of theater production, including lighting, set design, and stage management, prompting Hanks to drop out of college
6.
Kevin Bacon
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Kevin Norwood Bacon is an American actor and musician. Bacon is also known for taking on roles such as that of a sadistic guard in Sleepers. Also on television, he starred in the Fox series The Following from 2013 to 2015, Bacon has won a Golden Globe Award and three Screen Actors Guild Awards, and was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award. The Guardian named him one of the best actors never to have received an Academy Award nomination, in 2003, Bacon received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Bacon has become an icon for the concept of interconnectedness, having been popularized by the game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, in 2007, he created SixDegrees. org, a charitable foundation. Bacon, one of six children, was born and raised in a family in Philadelphia. The experience solidified Bacons passion for the arts, Bacon left home at age 17 to pursue a theater career in New York City, where he appeared in a production at the Circle in the Square Theater School. I wanted life, man, the thing, he later recalled to Nancy Mills of Cosmopolitan. The message I got was The arts are it, art and creative expression are next to godliness. Combine that with an ego and you wind up with an actor. Bacons debut in the fraternity comedy National Lampoons Animal House did not lead to the fame he had sought and he briefly worked on the television soap operas Search for Tomorrow and Guiding Light in New York. In 1980, he had a prominent role in the slasher film Friday the 13th, some of his early stage work included Getting Out, performed at New Yorks Phoenix Theater, and Flux, at Second Stage Theatre during their 1981–1982 season. In 1982, he won an Obie Award for his role in Forty Deuce, bolstered by the attention garnered by his performance in Diner, Bacon starred in the box-office smash Footloose. To prepare for the role, Bacon enrolled at a school as a transfer student named Ren McCormick. Bacon earned strong reviews for Footloose, and he appeared on the cover of People magazine soon after its release. Bacons critical and box office led to a period of typecasting in roles similar to the two he portrayed in Diner and Footloose, and he had difficulty shaking this on-screen image. For the next years he chose films that cast him against either type and experienced, by his own estimation. In 1988, he starred in John Hughes comedy Shes Having a Baby, in 1990, Bacon had two successful roles
7.
Bill Paxton
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William Bill Paxton was an American actor and film director. The films in which he appeared include The Terminator, Weird Science, Aliens, Predator 2, True Lies, Apollo 13, Twister, Titanic, U-571, Edge of Tomorrow, Paxton also starred in the HBO drama series Big Love. In 2013, he received an Emmy Award nomination for his performance in the miniseries Hatfields & McCoys, Paxton was born and raised in Fort Worth, Texas, the son of Mary Lou and John Lane Paxton. His father was a businessman, lumber wholesaler, museum executive and his mother was Roman Catholic, and he and his siblings were raised in her faith. Paxton was in the crowd when President John F. Kennedy emerged from the Hotel Texas on the morning of his assassination on November 22,1963, photographs of an 8-year-old Paxton being lifted above the crowd are on display at the Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas, Texas. On the Marc Maron podcast, Paxton revealed at the age of 13 he contracted rheumatic fever which had damaged his heart, during his teens, Paxton worked as a paper delivery boy with Mike Muir. He directed several films, including the music video for Barnes & Barnes novelty song Fish Heads. He was cast in a video for the 1982 Pat Benatar song Shadows of the Night. In 1982, Paxton and his friend Andrew Todd Rosenthal formed a new wave band called Martini Ranch. The band released its full length album, Holy Cow. The album was produced by Devo member Bob Casale and featured guest appearances by two members of that band. The music video for the bands single Reach was directed by James Cameron, Paxton worked with director James Cameron on True Lies and Titanic, the latter of which was the highest-grossing film of all time at its release. In his other roles, Paxton played Morgan Earp in Tombstone, Fred Haise in Apollo 13, the lead in Twister, Paxton directed the feature films Frailty, in which he starred, and The Greatest Game Ever Played. Four years after appearing in Titanic, he joined Cameron on an expedition to the actual Titanic, a film about this trip, Ghosts of the Abyss, was released in 2003. He also appeared in the video for Limp Bizkits 2003 song Eat You Alive as a sheriff. His highest profile television performances received positive attention, including his lead role in HBOs Big Love. Paxton also received good reviews for his performance in the History Channels miniseries Hatfields & McCoys, for which he was nominated for an Emmy Award, alongside co-star Kevin Costner. In 2014, he played the role of the villainous John Garrett in Agents of S. H. I. E. L. D. and a supporting role in Edge of Tomorrow
8.
Gary Sinise
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Gary Alan Sinise is an American actor, director, and musician. Among other awards, he has won an Emmy Award, a Golden Globe Award, Sinise is known for several memorable roles. In 2016, Sinise began starring in Criminal Minds, Beyond Borders, Sinise was born in Blue Island, Illinois, son of Robert L. Sinise, a film editor, and his wife Mylles Sinise. His paternal grandfather was of Italian descent, Sinises great-grandfather Vito Sinisi having immigrated from Ripacandida, Sinise briefly attended Glenbard West High School in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, and later graduated from Highland Park High School in Highland Park, Illinois, followed by Illinois State University. In 1974, Sinise and two friends, Terry Kinney and Jeff Perry, founded the Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Sinise honed his acting and directing skills at Steppenwolf, and received a Joseph Jefferson Award for his direction of Lyle Kesslers play Orphans. That took him from Chicago to New York City, and then to Londons West End, in 1982, Sinises career began to take off when he directed and starred in Steppenwolfs production of True West. In 1983, he earned an Obie Award for his direction, in 1988, Sinise directed Miles from Home, a film starring Richard Gere, about two brothers fight against the foreclosure of the family farm. Sinise collaborated with fellow actor Tom Hanks three times, including Forrest Gump, Apollo 13, and The Green Mile. Other noteworthy films in which Sinise has appeared include Of Mice and Men, Reindeer Games, Snake Eyes, Ransom, Mission to Mars, The Stand and he narrated the audiobooks for John Steinbecks Travels with Charley. In 2004, he began his first regular series, in the crime drama CSI, New York. He was credited as a producer from season two onwards and wrote the storyline of an episode, Dan Band, which Sinise and Kimo Williams co-founded in 2003. The band is named for Sinises character in Forrest Gump, apart from his television and movie work, Sinise is the host in the video for the Epcot ride Mission, SPACE, at Walt Disney World, Orlando, Florida, and a model for Baume & Mercier watches. Sinise said, Iraq is in the every day. But there are some positive stories, and how our soldiers are rebuilding schools and helping kids is one of them. Sinise was the narrator for the Discovery Channels miniseries When We Left Earth in 2008 and he was awarded the Presidential Citizen Medal by George W. Bush for work he did supporting the U. S. military and humanitarian work supporting Iraqi children. He narrated Army and Army Reserve Army Strong recruitment ads in late 2008 and he is also the national spokesperson for the American Veterans Disabled for Life Memorial. Sinise is the executive producer—along with David Scantling—of the Iraq War documentary Brothers at War, the film features an American military family and the experiences of three brothers, Jake Rademacher, Isaac Rademacher, and Joseph Rademacher. In November 2009, Sinise narrated the highly acclaimed World War II in HD on the History Channel, in 2010, he narrated the World War II documentary Missions That Changed The War on the Military Channel
9.
Ed Harris
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Edward Allen Ed Harris is an American actor, producer, director, and screenwriter. Harris currently stars in the HBO sci-fi drama series Westworld, as well as Alejandro G. Iñárritus upcoming Starz drama series The One Percent. Harris is a nominee of the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performances in Apollo 13, The Truman Show. He was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor for playing artist Jackson Pollock in his directorial debut Pollock and he also won a Golden Globe Award for playing Senator John McCain in Game Change. In 2015, Harris received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and he has two brothers, Paul and Robert. Harris was raised in a middle class Presbyterian family and he graduated from Tenafly High School in 1969, where he played on the football team, serving as the teams captain in his senior year. A star athlete in school, Harris competed in athletics at Columbia University in 1969. When his family moved to New Mexico two years later, Harris followed, having discovered his interest in acting in theater plays. He enrolled at the University of Oklahoma to study drama, Harris began his career on the stage. Harris first film came in 1978 with a minor part in the suspense film Coma. His first major role in a film two years later with Borderline, in which he starred alongside Charles Bronson. In 1981, Harris played the lead, William Billy Davis, the following year, he co-starred as Hank Blaine in the black comedy horror anthology film Creepshow, directed by George A. Romero. In 1983, Harris became well-known after portraying astronaut John Glenn in The Right Stuff, in 1984, he co-starred in the Robert Benton-directed drama film Places in the Heart, during production of this film, Harris met and married his wife Amy Madigan. In 1986, he received a Tony Award nomination in the Best Actor in a Play category for his role in George Furths Precious Sons and he also won the Theatre World Award and Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actor in a Play for his performance. Harris then portrayed William Walker, a 19th-century American who appointed himself President of Nicaragua and that same year, he played the main role of Harry Nash in the HBO television thriller film The Last Innocent Man. In 1989, his role as David Dave Flannigan in Jacknife earned him his first Golden Globe Award nomination, also in 1989, he portrayed Virgil Bud Brigman in the sci-fi film The Abyss, directed by James Cameron. In 1992, Harris co-starred as Dave Moss in the drama film Glengarry Glen Ross and he won the Valladolid International Film Festival Award for Best Actor for his performance in the film. He next appeared in the films The Firm and Needful Things, the following year, Harris starred in and executive produced the television adaptation of Riders of the Purple Sage
10.
Kathleen Quinlan
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Kathleen Denise Quinlan is an American film and television actress. Her other film appearances include Airport 77, The Promise, The Runner Stumbles, Sunday Lovers, Sunset, Claras Heart, The Doors, Breakdown, and Breach. Quinlan was born in Pasadena, California, the daughter of Josephine, a military supply supervisor, and Robert Quinlan and she was raised in Mill Valley, California, where she attended Tamalpais High School, studied drama and began her acting career. She has been married to actor Bruce Abbott since April 12,1994, Quinlan made her film debut in George Lucas 1973 nostalgic look at the early 60s, American Graffiti at the age of 19. As a young actress, she guest-starred in several 1970s television series, including Police Woman, Ironside, kathleen Quinlan at the Internet Movie Database
11.
James Horner
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James Roy Horner was an American composer, conductor and orchestrator of film scores. He was known for the integration of choral and electronic elements in many of his film scores, and for his frequent use of motifs associated with Celtic music. His first major film score was for the 1979 film The Lady in Red, but did not establish himself as a mainstream composer until he worked on the 1982 film Star Trek II, The Wrath of Khan. Horner composed music for over 100 films, he won two Academy Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, three Satellite Awards, and three Saturn Awards, and was nominated for three British Academy Film Awards. Horner was killed in a single-fatality crash of his Short Tucano turboprop aircraft at the age of 61, Horner was born in 1953 in Los Angeles, California, to Jewish immigrants. His father, Harry Horner, was born in Holíč, then a part of Austria-Hungary and he immigrated to the United States in 1935 and worked as a set designer and art director. His mother, Joan Ruth, was born into a prominent Canadian family, Horners brother Christopher is a writer and documentary filmmaker. James Horner started playing piano at the age of five and his early years were spent in London, where he attended the Royal College of Music. He returned to America, where he attended Verde Valley School in Sedona, Arizona, after he earned a masters degree, he started work on his doctorate at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he studied with Paul Chihara, among others. After several scoring assignments with the American Film Institute in the 1970s, he finished teaching a course in theory at UCLA. Horner was also a pilot, and owned several small airplanes. Horner began his career scoring films by working for B film director, Horners first composer credit was for Cormans Battle Beyond the Stars. From there, his works gained notice in Hollywood, which enabled him to take on larger projects, One of his first major film scores was for the 1979 film The Lady in Red. Horners major breakthrough came in 1982, when he had the chance to score the music to Star Trek II, The Wrath of Khan, Horner continued composing music for high-profile releases during the 1980s, including 48 Hrs. Krull, Star Trek III, The Search for Spock, Commando, Cocoon, Aliens, *batteries not included, Willow, Glory and he frequently collaborated with film director Ron Howard, a partnership that began with Cocoon in 1985. Aliens earned Horner his first Academy Award nomination for Best Original Score in 1987, somewhere Out There, which he co-composed and co-wrote with Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil for An American Tail, was also nominated that year for Best Original Song. A Dinosaurs Story, The Pagemaster, and Casper, Jumanji, and Balto, Mighty Joe Young, Horners biggest financial and critical success would come with the score to the 1997 film Titanic. The album became the best-selling primarily orchestral soundtrack in history, selling over 27 million copies worldwide, at the 70th Academy Awards, Horner won Oscars for Best Original Dramatic Score and Best Original Song for My Heart Will Go On
12.
Imagine Entertainment
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Imagine Entertainment is an American film and television production company founded in 1986 by director Ron Howard and producer Brian Grazer. Brian Grazer and Ron Howard met in 1982 on Night Shift with Howard directing, then followed it up with working on 1984s Splash. Early on the company sealed a production and distribution deal with Universal Pictures expiring in November 1992, universals deal was to fund 50% of 30 films. The company had an IPO in 1986 at $8 for a package of one share, shares rose to $19.25 before falling in the stock market crash in 1987 to $2.25. A pay television broadcast agreement was made with Showtime, by May 1992, 48% of the stock was public traded and worth $9.375. The duo agreed to a new six deal with Universal while concurrently offering $9 a share to buy the companys public outstanding share to start a new company with its assets. If not they planned to leave the company at their contract expiration in November to start the new company anyway, Universal was providing the cash for the buy out for an equity stake in the new company. In 2000, the partnership partnered for TV series development with 20th Century Fox, in 2011, the company had three weak box office performers with The Dilemma, Cowboys & Aliens and Tower Heist. Because of their weak financial pact renewal with Universal in January 2012 and this also moves Imagine from exclusive to a first look deal. By 2013, Imagine was considering other funding methods for the films including crowdfunding for a Friday Night Lights movie. In November 2013, Michael Rosenberg was promoted to Co-chairman followed in December 2013 with Erica Huggins being promoted to his previous position of president. Industry insiders indicated in late January 2016 that a deal with Raine Group was in the works that would have Raine become a partner of the company while contributing $100 million. The feature-film division has participated in over sixty productions and is associated with Universal Pictures, Erica Huggins was hired as senior vice president of motion pictures and was elevated to exec vice president in 2006 then in 2010 to co-president of production. 2010 Robin Hood 2011 Take Me Home Tonight The Dilemma Cowboys & Aliens Restless Tower Heist J
13.
Universal Pictures
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Universal Pictures is an American film studio owned by Comcast through the Universal Filmed Entertainment Group division of its wholly owned subsidiary NBCUniversal. The company was founded in 1912 by Carl Laemmle, Mark Dintenfass, Charles O. Baumann, Adam Kessel, Pat Powers, William Swanson, David Horsley and its studios are located in Universal City, California, and its corporate offices are located in New York City. Universal Pictures is a member of the Motion Picture Association of America and is one of Hollywoods Big Six studios. Universal Studios was founded by Carl Laemmle, Mark Dintenfass, Charles O. Baumann, Adam Kessel, Pat Powers, William Swanson, David Horsley, Robert H. Cochrane, one story has Laemmle watching a box office for hours, counting patrons and calculating the days takings. Within weeks of his Chicago trip, Laemmle gave up dry goods to buy the first several nickelodeons, for Laemmle and other such entrepreneurs, the creation in 1908 of the Edison-backed Motion Picture Trust meant that exhibitors were expected to pay fees for Trust-produced films they showed. Soon, Laemmle and other disgruntled nickelodeon owners decided to avoid paying Edison by producing their own pictures, in June 1909, Laemmle started the Yankee Film Company with partners Abe Stern and Julius Stern. Laemmle broke with Edisons custom of refusing to give billing and screen credits to performers, by naming the movie stars, he attracted many of the leading players of the time, contributing to the creation of the star system. In 1910, he promoted Florence Lawrence, formerly known as The Biograph Girl, the Universal Film Manufacturing Company was incorporated in New York on April 30,1912. Laemmle, who emerged as president in July 1912, was the figure in the partnership with Dintenfass, Baumann, Kessel, Powers, Swanson, Horsley. Eventually all would be out by Laemmle. Following the westward trend of the industry, by the end of 1912 the company was focusing its efforts in the Hollywood area. On March 15,1915, Laemmle opened the worlds largest motion picture production facility, Universal City Studios, studio management became the third facet of Universals operations, with the studio incorporated as a distinct subsidiary organization. Unlike other movie moguls, Laemmle opened his studio to tourists, Universal became the largest studio in Hollywood, and remained so for a decade. However, it sought an audience mostly in towns, producing mostly inexpensive melodramas, westerns. In its early years Universal released three brands of feature films — Red Feather, low-budget programmers, Bluebird, more ambitious productions, and Jewel, their prestige motion pictures. Directors included Jack Conway, John Ford, Rex Ingram, Robert Z. Leonard, George Marshall and Lois Weber, despite Laemmles role as an innovator, he was an extremely cautious studio chief. Unlike rivals Adolph Zukor, William Fox, and Marcus Loew and he also financed all of his own films, refusing to take on debt. Character actor Lon Chaney became a card for Universal in the 1920s
14.
Apollo 13
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Apollo 13 was the seventh manned mission in the American Apollo space program and the third intended to land on the Moon. The mission was commanded by James A. Lovell with John L. Jack Swigert as Command Module Pilot, Swigert was a late replacement for the original CM pilot Ken Mattingly, who was grounded by the flight surgeon after exposure to German measles. The story of the Apollo 13 mission has been dramatized multiple times and that crew was composed of L. Gordon Cooper, Jr, Donn F. Eisele, Edgar D. Mitchell. Deke Slayton, NASAs Director of Flight Crew Operations, never intended to rotate Cooper and Eisele to another mission and he assigned them to the backup crew simply because of a lack of flight-qualified manpower in the Astronaut Office at the time the assignment needed to be made. Slayton felt Cooper had no more than a small chance of receiving the Apollo 13 command, if he did an outstanding job with the assignment. Thus, the original assignment Slayton submitted to his superiors for this flight was, shepard, Jr, Stuart A. Roosa, Edgar D. Mitchell. Seven days before launch, the Backup Lunar Module Pilot, Charlie Duke and this exposed both the prime and backup crews, who trained together. Mattingly was found to be the one of the other five who had not had rubella as a child. Three days before launch, at the insistence of the Flight Surgeon, Mattingly never contracted rubella and was assigned after the mission as Command Module Pilot to Youngs crew, which later flew Apollo 16, the fifth mission to land on the Moon. Vance D. Brand, Jack R. Lousma, Joseph P. Kerwin, Gene Kranz – White Team, Glynn Lunney – Black Team, Milt Windler – Maroon Team, Gerry Griffin – Gold Team. The astronauts mission insignia was sculpted as a medallion titled Steeds of Apollo by Lumen Martin Winter and was struck by the Franklin Mint. Mass, CSM Odyssey 63,470 pounds, LM Aquarius 33,490 pounds, Perigee,99.3 nautical miles, Apogee,100.3 nautical miles, Inclination,31. 817°, Period,88.19 min. The Apollo 13 mission was to explore the Fra Mauro formation, or Fra Mauro highlands and it is a widespread, hilly selenological area thought to be composed of ejecta from the impact that formed Mare Imbrium. The next Apollo mission, Apollo 14, eventually made a flight to Fra Mauro. April 14,1970 UTC Oxygen tank explosion,03,07,53 UTC,173,790.5 nmi from Earth CSM power down, Crew was on board the USS Iwo Jima 45 minutes later. The mission was launched at the time,02,13,00 PM EST on April 11. An anomaly occurred when the second-stage, center engine shut down two minutes early. The engine shutdown was determined to be caused by severe pogo oscillations measured at a strength of 68 g, the vehicles guidance system shut the engine down in response to sensed thrust chamber pressure fluctuations
15.
Astronaut
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An astronaut or cosmonaut is a person trained by a human spaceflight program to command, pilot, or serve as a crew member of a spacecraft. Although generally reserved for professional space travelers, the terms are applied to anyone who travels into space, including scientists, politicians, journalists. Starting in the 1950s up to 2002, astronauts were sponsored and trained exclusively by governments, with the suborbital flight of the privately funded SpaceShipOne in 2004, a new category of astronaut was created, the commercial astronaut. The criteria for what constitutes human spaceflight vary, the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale Sporting Code for astronautics recognizes only flights that exceed an altitude of 100 kilometers. In the United States, professional, military, and commercial astronauts who travel above an altitude of 50 miles are awarded astronaut wings. As of 17 November 2016, a total of 552 people from 36 countries have reached 100 km or more in altitude, of which 549 reached low Earth orbit or beyond. Of these,24 people have traveled beyond Low Earth orbit, to either lunar or trans-lunar orbit or to the surface of the moon, the three astronauts who have not reached low Earth orbit are spaceplane pilots Joe Walker, Mike Melvill, and Brian Binnie. As of 17 November 2016, under the U. S. definition 558 people qualify as having reached space, of eight X-15 pilots who exceeded 50 miles in altitude, only one exceeded 100 kilometers. Space travelers have spent over 41,790 man-days in space, as of 2016, the man with the longest cumulative time in space is Gennady Padalka, who has spent 879 days in space. Peggy A. Whitson holds the record for the most time in space by a woman,377 days, dryden preferred cosmonaut, on the grounds that flights would occur in the cosmos, while the astro prefix suggested flight to the stars. Most NASA Space Task Group members preferred astronaut, which survived by common usage as the preferred American term, when the Soviet Union launched the first man into space, Yuri Gagarin in 1961, they chose a term which anglicizes to cosmonaut. In English-speaking nations, a space traveler is called an astronaut. The term derives from the Greek words ástron, meaning star, the first known use of the term astronaut in the modern sense was by Neil R. Jones in his short story The Deaths Head Meteor in 1930. The word itself had been known earlier, for example, in Percy Gregs 1880 book Across the Zodiac, astronaut referred to a spacecraft. In Les Navigateurs de lInfini of J. -H, rosny aîné, the word astronautique was used. The word may have inspired by aeronaut, an older term for an air traveler first applied to balloonists. An early use in a publication is Eric Frank Russells poem The Astronaut in the November 1934 Bulletin of the British Interplanetary Society. NASA applies the term astronaut to any crew member aboard NASA spacecraft bound for Earth orbit or beyond, NASA also uses the term as a title for those selected to join its Astronaut Corps
16.
Jack Swigert
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John Leonard Jack Swigert Jr. was an American test pilot, mechanical and aerospace engineer, United States Air Force pilot, and NASA astronaut, one of the 24 people who have flown to the Moon. Before joining NASA in 1966, Swigert was a civilian test pilot, after leaving NASA, he was elected to Congress from Colorados new 6th district, but died before being sworn in. Born in Denver, Colorado, with parents John Leonard Swigert Sr. at the age of 14, he became fascinated by aviation. While he would have been content just watching planes take off from nearby Combs Field and he took on a newspaper route to earn money for flying lessons, and by age 16 he was a licensed private pilot. He attended Blessed Sacrament School, Regis Jesuit High School, and East High School, Swigert received a Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Colorado in 1953, where he also played football for the Buffaloes. His recreational interests included golf, handball, bowling, skiing, swimming and he was a member of the Boy Scouts of America and attained the rank of Second Class Scout. Following his graduation from Colorado in 1953, Swigert joined the U. S. Air Force, upon graduation from the Pilot Training Program and Gunnery School at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, he was assigned as a fighter pilot in Japan and Korea. In the latter nation, he experienced his first narrow escape from death, according to the New York Times, His plane crashed into a radar unit on a Korean airstrip and burst into flames. He walked away from the accident with minor injuries, after completing his tour of active duty in the Air Force, he served as a jet fighter pilot with the Massachusetts and Connecticut Air National Guard. Swigert held a position as engineering test pilot for North American Aviation before joining NASA and he was previously an engineering test pilot for Pratt & Whitney, from 1957 to 1964. He logged over 7,200 hours in flight, with more than 5,725 in jet aircraft, after unsuccessfully applying for NASAs second and third astronaut selections, Swigert was accepted into the NASA Astronaut Corps as part of NASA Astronaut Group 5 in April 1966. Swigert became a specialist on the Apollo Command Module, he was one of the few astronauts who requested to be command module pilots, Swigert was one of three astronauts aboard the Apollo 13 moon mission launched April 11,1970. Originally part of the crew for the mission, he was assigned to the mission three days before launch, replacing astronaut Ken Mattingly. The prime crew had been exposed to German Measles and, because Mattingly had no immunity to the disease, the mission was the third lunar-landing attempt, but was aborted after the rupture of an oxygen tank in the spacecrafts service module. Swigert was the astronaut who made the announcement, Houston. The statement was repeated by Commander of the flight Jim Lovell. Swigert, along with fellow astronauts Lovell and Fred Haise, returned safely to Earth on April 17 after about 5 days and 23 hours, Swigert received the NASA Distinguished Service Medal. Swigert was slated to be the command pilot for the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project
17.
Fred Haise
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Fred Wallace Haise Jr. is an American aeronautical engineer, fighter pilot with the U. S. Marine Corps and the U. S. Air Force, test pilot, and NASA astronaut. He is one of only 24 people to have flown to the Moon and he was to have been the sixth person to land and walk on the Moon, but the Apollo 13 mission was aborted before lunar landing. He went on to fly Space Shuttle Approach and Landing Tests in 1977 and he was a Boy Scout, earning the rank of Star Scout. Eligible for the draft and despite being apprehensive of flying, he joined the aviation cadet training program. Haise underwent Naval Aviator training from 1952 to 1954 and served as a U. S. Marine Corps fighter pilot at MCAS Cherry Point, North Carolina, Haise has accumulated 9,300 hours flying time, including 6,200 hours in jets. He then worked for the newly created NASA, first as a pilot at the Lewis Research Center near Cleveland. His air guard unit was called up during the Berlin Crisis of 1961, Haise completed post-graduate courses at the Aerospace Research Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base, California in 1964, and the Harvard Business Schools Advanced Management Program in 1972. He received an honorary Doctorate of Science from Western Michigan University in 1970, in 1966, Haise was one of 19 new astronauts selected for NASA Astronaut Group 5. He had already been working with NASA for several years as a research pilot. He was the first astronaut among his class to be assigned to a mission, Haise flew as the Lunar Module Pilot on the aborted Apollo 13 lunar mission in 1970. Haise was slated to become the human to walk on the Moon during Apollo 13 behind Lovell. Alan Shepard and Edgar Mitchell eventually became the fifth and sixth, respectively, on Apollo 14, during this flight Fred developed a UTI and later kidney infections. These caused him to be in pain for most of the trip, Haise remained in the astronaut rotation and served as the backup mission Commander for Apollo 16. Though there was no selection, Haise was prospectively slated to command Apollo 19 with William R. Pogue as Command Module Pilot. However, the mission was canceled in late 1970 due to budget cuts, after completing his backup assignment on Apollo 16, Haise moved over to the Space Shuttle program. In 1977, he participated in the programs Approach and Landing Tests at Edwards Air Force Base, along with C. Gordon Fullerton as Pilot, Haise as Commander piloted the Space Shuttle Enterprise in free flight to three successful landings after being released from the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft. These tests successfully verified the flight characteristics, an important step toward the overall success of the program. However, delays in the Shuttle program development as well as an increase in Skylabs orbital decay led to the mission being abandoned
18.
NASA
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President Dwight D. Eisenhower established NASA in 1958 with a distinctly civilian orientation encouraging peaceful applications in space science. The National Aeronautics and Space Act was passed on July 29,1958, disestablishing NASAs predecessor, the new agency became operational on October 1,1958. Since that time, most US space exploration efforts have led by NASA, including the Apollo Moon landing missions, the Skylab space station. Currently, NASA is supporting the International Space Station and is overseeing the development of the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, the agency is also responsible for the Launch Services Program which provides oversight of launch operations and countdown management for unmanned NASA launches. NASA shares data with various national and international such as from the Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite. Since 2011, NASA has been criticized for low cost efficiency, from 1946, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics had been experimenting with rocket planes such as the supersonic Bell X-1. In the early 1950s, there was challenge to launch a satellite for the International Geophysical Year. An effort for this was the American Project Vanguard, after the Soviet launch of the worlds first artificial satellite on October 4,1957, the attention of the United States turned toward its own fledgling space efforts. This led to an agreement that a new federal agency based on NACA was needed to conduct all non-military activity in space. The Advanced Research Projects Agency was created in February 1958 to develop technology for military application. On July 29,1958, Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act, a NASA seal was approved by President Eisenhower in 1959. Elements of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency and the United States Naval Research Laboratory were incorporated into NASA, earlier research efforts within the US Air Force and many of ARPAs early space programs were also transferred to NASA. In December 1958, NASA gained control of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA has conducted many manned and unmanned spaceflight programs throughout its history. Some missions include both manned and unmanned aspects, such as the Galileo probe, which was deployed by astronauts in Earth orbit before being sent unmanned to Jupiter, the experimental rocket-powered aircraft programs started by NACA were extended by NASA as support for manned spaceflight. This was followed by a space capsule program, and in turn by a two-man capsule program. This goal was met in 1969 by the Apollo program, however, reduction of the perceived threat and changing political priorities almost immediately caused the termination of most of these plans. NASA turned its attention to an Apollo-derived temporary space laboratory, to date, NASA has launched a total of 166 manned space missions on rockets, and thirteen X-15 rocket flights above the USAF definition of spaceflight altitude,260,000 feet. The X-15 was an NACA experimental rocket-powered hypersonic research aircraft, developed in conjunction with the US Air Force, the design featured a slender fuselage with fairings along the side containing fuel and early computerized control systems
19.
Moon landing
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A Moon landing is the arrival of a spacecraft on the surface of the Moon. This includes both manned and unmanned missions, the first human-made object to reach the surface of the Moon was the Soviet Unions Luna 2 mission, on 13 September 1959. The United States Apollo 11 was the first manned mission to land on the Moon, on 20 July 1969, there have been six manned U. S. landings and numerous unmanned landings, with no soft landings happening from 22 August 1976 until 14 December 2013. To date, the United States is the country to have successfully conducted manned missions to the Moon. Since then, twelve Soviet and U. S. spacecraft have used braking rockets to make landings and perform scientific operations on the lunar surface. In 1966 the USSR accomplished the first soft landings and took the first pictures from the surface during the Luna 9. The U. S. followed with five unmanned Surveyor soft landings, the Soviet Union achieved the first unmanned lunar soil sample return with the Luna 16 probe on 24 September 1970. This was followed by Luna 20 and Luna 24 in 1972 and 1976, following the failure at launch in 1969 of the first Lunokhod, Luna E-8 No.201, the Luna 17 and Luna 21 were successful unmanned lunar rover missions in 1970 and 1973. Many missions were failures at launch, in addition, several unmanned landing missions achieved the Lunar surface but were unsuccessful, including, Luna 15, Luna 18, and Luna 23 all crashed on landing, and the U. S. Surveyor 4 lost all radio contact only moments before its landing, more recently, other nations have crashed spacecraft on the surface of the Moon at speeds of around 8,000 kilometres per hour, often at precise, planned locations. These have generally been end-of-life lunar orbiters that, because of system degradations, japans lunar orbiter Hiten impacted the Moons surface on 10 April 1993. The European Space Agency performed a controlled impact with their orbiter SMART-1 on 3 September 2006. Indian Space Research Organisation performed a controlled impact with its Moon Impact Probe on 14 November 2008. The MIP was a probe from the Indian Chandrayaan-1 lunar orbiter. The Chinese lunar orbiter Change 1 executed a crash onto the surface of the Moon on 1 March 2009. The rover mission Change 3 was launched on 1 December 2013, a total of twelve men have landed on the Moon. Cernan was the last to step off the lunar surface, all Apollo lunar missions had a third crew member who remained on board the Command Module. The last three missions had a rover for increased mobility, in order to go to the Moon, a spacecraft must first leave the gravity well of the Earth
20.
Reduced-gravity aircraft
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A reduced-gravity aircraft is a type of fixed-wing aircraft that provides brief near-weightless environments for training astronauts, conducting research and making gravity-free movie shots. Versions of such airplanes, officially nicknamed Weightless Wonders, were operated by the NASA Reduced Gravity Research Program, the unofficial nickname vomit comet became popular among those who experienced their operation. Parabolic flights as a way of simulating weightlessness was first proposed by the German aerospace engineer Fritz Haber, both had been brought to the US after World War II as part of Operation Paperclip. Parabolic flights are used to examine the effects of weightlessness on a living organism. The aircraft gives its occupants the sensation of weightlessness by following a flight path relative to the center of the Earth. While following this path, the aircraft and its payload are in free fall at certain points of its flight path, the aircraft is used in this way to demonstrate to astronauts what it is like to orbit the Earth. During this time the aircraft does not exert any ground reaction force on its contents, initially, the aircraft climbs with a pitch angle of 45 degrees using engine thrust and elevator controls. Weightlessness begins while ascending and lasts all the way up-and-over the hump, at this point, the craft is pointing downward at high speed and must begin to pull back into the nose-up attitude to repeat the maneuver. The forces are roughly twice that of gravity on the way down, at the bottom. This lasts all the way until the aircraft is again halfway up its upward trajectory, and this aircraft is used to train astronauts in zero-g maneuvers, giving them about 25 seconds of weightlessness out of 65 seconds of flight in each parabola. During such training, the airplane typically flies about 40–60 parabolic maneuvers, in about two thirds of the passengers, these flights produce nausea due to airsickness, giving the plane its nickname vomit comet. The Canadian Space Agency and the National Research Council have a Falcon 20 used for microgravity research, the small plane is normally not used for people to float freely and experience weightlessness, however comedian Rick Mercer did so for a segment on his show. The first zero G plane to enter service in Latin America is a T-39 Sabreliner nicknamed CONDOR, operated for the Ecuadorian Civilian Space Agency and the Ecuadorian Air Force since May,2008. On June 19,2008, this carried a 7-year-old boy as he set the Guinness world record for the youngest human being to fly in microgravity. Since 1984 the ESA and the CNES have flown reduced-gravity missions in a variety of aircraft, including NASAs KC-135, a Caravelle, an Ilyushin IL-76 MDK, in 2014 the A300 was phased out in favor of a more modern Airbus A310, also named Zero-G. It is based at Bordeaux-Mérignac airport in France and has also flown from Dübendorf Air Base in Switzerland. Since 1997 CNES subsidiary Novespace has handled the management of these flights, in Russia, commercial flights are offered on the Ilyushin Il-76 jet, several U. S. companies book flights on these jets. OK Go, an American alternative rock band, made a video for their song Upside Down & Inside Out while moving about in microgravity
21.
Free fall
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In Newtonian physics, free fall is any motion of a body where gravity is the only force acting upon it. In the context of relativity, where gravitation is reduced to a space-time curvature. The present article only concerns itself with free fall in the Newtonian domain, an object in the technical sense of free fall may not necessarily be falling down in the usual sense of the term. An object moving upwards would not normally be considered to be falling, the moon is thus in free fall. The term free fall is used more loosely than in the strict sense defined above. Thus, falling through an atmosphere without a parachute, or lifting device, is also often referred to as free fall. The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle discussed falling objects in Physics which was perhaps the first book on mechanics, the Italian scientist Galileo Galilei subjected the Aristotelian theories to experimentation and careful observation. He then combined the results of experiments with mathematical analysis in an unprecedented way. According to a tale that may be apocryphal, in 1589–92 Galileo dropped two objects of mass from the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Given the speed at such a fall would occur, it is doubtful that Galileo could have extracted much information from this experiment. Most of his observations of falling bodies were really of bodies rolling down ramps and this slowed things down enough to the point where he was able to measure the time intervals with water clocks and his own pulse. This he repeated a full hundred times until he had achieved an accuracy such that the deviation between two observations never exceeded one-tenth of a pulse beat, in 1589–92, Galileo wrote De Motu Antiquiora, an unpublished manuscript on the motion of falling bodies. Examples of objects in free fall include, A spacecraft with propulsion off, an object dropped at the top of a drop tube. An object thrown upward or a jumping off the ground at low speed. Technically, an object is in free fall even when moving upwards or instantaneously at rest at the top of its motion, if gravity is the only influence acting, then the acceleration is always downward and has the same magnitude for all bodies, commonly denoted g. Since all objects fall at the rate in the absence of other forces, objects. Examples of objects not in free fall, Flying in an aircraft, standing on the ground, the gravitational force is counteracted by the normal force from the ground. Descending to the Earth using a parachute, which balances the force of gravity with a drag force
22.
Academy Awards
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The various category winners are awarded a copy of a golden statuette, officially called the Academy Award of Merit, which has become commonly known by its nickname Oscar. The awards, first presented in 1929 at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, are overseen by AMPAS, the awards ceremony was first broadcast on radio in 1930 and televised for the first time in 1953. It is now live in more than 200 countries and can be streamed live online. The Academy Awards ceremony is the oldest worldwide entertainment awards ceremony and its equivalents – the Emmy Awards for television, the Tony Awards for theater, and the Grammy Awards for music and recording – are modeled after the Academy Awards. The 89th Academy Awards ceremony, honoring the best films of 2016, were held on February 26,2017, at the Dolby Theatre, in Los Angeles, the ceremony was hosted by Jimmy Kimmel and was broadcast on ABC. A total of 3,048 Oscars have been awarded from the inception of the award through the 88th, the first Academy Awards presentation was held on May 16,1929, at a private dinner function at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel with an audience of about 270 people. The post-awards party was held at the Mayfair Hotel, the cost of guest tickets for that nights ceremony was $5. Fifteen statuettes were awarded, honoring artists, directors and other participants in the industry of the time. The ceremony ran for 15 minutes, winners were announced to media three months earlier, however, that was changed for the second ceremony in 1930. Since then, for the rest of the first decade, the results were given to newspapers for publication at 11,00 pm on the night of the awards. The first Best Actor awarded was Emil Jannings, for his performances in The Last Command and he had to return to Europe before the ceremony, so the Academy agreed to give him the prize earlier, this made him the first Academy Award winner in history. With the fourth ceremony, however, the system changed, for the first six ceremonies, the eligibility period spanned two calendar years. At the 29th ceremony, held on March 27,1957, until then, foreign-language films had been honored with the Special Achievement Award. The 74th Academy Awards, held in 2002, presented the first Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, since 1973, all Academy Awards ceremonies always end with the Academy Award for Best Picture. The Academy also awards Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting, see also § Awards of Merit categories The best known award is the Academy Award of Merit, more popularly known as the Oscar statuette. The five spokes represent the branches of the Academy, Actors, Writers, Directors, Producers. The model for the statuette is said to be Mexican actor Emilio El Indio Fernández, sculptor George Stanley sculpted Cedric Gibbons design. The statuettes presented at the ceremonies were gold-plated solid bronze
23.
Academy Award for Best Film Editing
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The Academy Award for Best Film Editing is one of the annual awards of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Nominations for this award are closely correlated with the Academy Award for Best Picture. For 33 consecutive years,1981 to 2013, every Best Picture winner had also nominated for the Film Editing Oscar. Only the principal, above the line editor as listed in the credits are named on the award, additional editors, supervising editors. The nominations for this Academy Award are determined by a ballot of the members of the Editing Branch of the Academy. The members may vote for up to five of the films in the order of their preference. The Academy Award itself is selected from the films by a subsequent ballot of all active. This award was first given for films released in 1934, the name of this award is occasionally changed, in 2008, it was listed as the Academy Award for Achievement in Film Editing. Michael Kahn won for Raiders of the Lost Ark, Schindlers List, thelma Schoonmaker won for Raging Bull, The Aviator, and The Departed. To date, two film directors have won this award, James Cameron and Alfonso Cuarón for the films Titanic and Gravity, also, nominated editors Robert Wise, Francis D. West Side Story, The Sound of Music, The Sand Pebbles and The Andromeda Strain for Wise, Crazylegs for Lyon and Bound for Glory, superlatives taken from a document published by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. These listings are based on the Awards Database maintained by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
24.
House party
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A house party is typically a type of party where medium to large groups of people gather at the residence of the partys host. In modern usage, a party is typically associated with teenage or young adult crowds, loud music, dancing. Historically, the term has referred to more genteel gatherings at country estates. A house party might be organized several months, down to just a few hours, news of a party is often spread by word of mouth, the sending of formal invitations, or on social networking websites like Facebook. In the case of the latter, the host must be careful of how public the information regarding the party is made. A person who attends a party, but has not been invited, is typically referred to as a gatecrasher. Such an activity is usually perceived negatively, although more liberal hosts may permit gatecrashers, in some instances house parties do not attract large crowds, and with ten or fewer people is often referred to as a gathering. An early example of a party can be seen in the play Mostellaria by the Roman playwright Plautus. In it a man called Philolaches is having a great time while his father is away on business. House parties have become a prominent feature in popular movies, particularly aimed at teenagers. While many have probably been present before the movie, Animal House is one of the first to provide a scene of a house party. Art Linkletters House Party Cocktail party House Party, Inc
25.
Neil Armstrong
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Neil Alden Armstrong was an American astronaut and the first person to walk on the Moon. He was also an engineer, naval aviator, test pilot. Before becoming an astronaut, Armstrong was an officer in the U. S. Navy and he later completed graduate studies at the University of Southern California. A participant in the U. S. Air Forces Man in Space Soonest and X-20 Dyna-Soar human spaceflight programs and he made his first space flight as command pilot of Gemini 8 in March 1966, becoming NASAs first civilian astronaut to fly in space. He performed the first docking of two spacecraft, with pilot David Scott and this mission was aborted after Armstrong used some of his reentry control fuel to prevent a dangerous spin caused by a stuck thruster, in the first in-flight space emergency. Armstrongs second and last spaceflight was as commander of Apollo 11, along with Collins and Aldrin, Armstrong was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Richard Nixon. President Jimmy Carter presented Armstrong the Congressional Space Medal of Honor in 1978, Armstrong and his former crewmates received the Congressional Gold Medal in 2009. Armstrong died in Cincinnati, Ohio on August 25,2012, at the age of 82, Armstrong was born on August 5,1930 near Wapakoneta, Ohio, the son of Stephen Koenig Armstrong and Viola Louise Engel. He was of German, Irish, and Scottish ancestry, and had a sister, June. His father worked as an auditor for the Ohio state government, Armstrongs love for flying grew during this time, having gotten off to an early start when his father took his two-year-old son to the Cleveland Air Races. When he was five, he experienced his first airplane flight in Warren, Ohio on July 20,1936 when he and his father took a ride in a Ford Trimotor and his fathers last move was in 1944, back to Wapakoneta. Armstrong attended Blume High School and took flying lessons at the grassy Wapakoneta airfield and he earned a student flight certificate on his 16th birthday, then soloed later in August, all before he had a drivers license. Armstrong was active in the Boy Scouts and earned the rank of Eagle Scout, as an adult, he was recognized by the Boy Scouts of America with its Distinguished Eagle Scout Award and Silver Buffalo Award. Houston replied, Thank you, Apollo 11, Im sure that, if they didnt hear that, theyll get the word through the news. Among the very few items that Neil Armstrong carried with him to the Moon. In 1947, at age 17, Armstrong began studying engineering at Purdue University. He was the person in his family to attend college. He was also accepted to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the only engineer he knew dissuaded him from attending, telling Armstrong that it was not necessary to go all the way to Cambridge, Massachusetts, for a good education
26.
Apollo 8
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Apollo 8 took three days to travel to the Moon. It orbited ten times over the course of 20 hours, during which the crew made a Christmas Eve television broadcast where they read the first 10 verses from the Book of Genesis, at the time, the broadcast was the most watched TV program ever. Apollo 8s successful mission paved the way for Apollo 11 to fulfill U. S. President John F. Kennedys goal of landing a man on the Moon before the end of the 1960s. The Apollo 8 astronauts returned to Earth on December 27,1968, the crew was named Time magazines Men of the Year for 1968 upon their return. Lovell was originally the CMP on the crew, with Michael Collins as the prime crews CMP. However, Collins was replaced in July 1968, after suffering a cervical disc herniation that required surgery to repair. This crew was unique among pre-shuttle era missions in that the commander was not the most experienced member of the crew, as Lovell had flown twice before, on Gemini VII and Gemini XII. When Lovell was rotated to the crew, no one with experience on CSM-103 was available, so Aldrin was moved to CMP. Neil Armstrong went on to command Apollo 11, where Aldrin was returned to the LMP position, Haise was rotated out of the crew and onto the backup crew of Apollo 11 as LMP. The Earth-based mission control teams for Apollo 8 consisted of astronauts assigned to the crew, as well as non-astronaut flight directors. They also served as CAPCOMs during the mission, for Apollo 8, these crew members included astronauts John S. Bull, Vance D. Brand, Gerald P. Carr, and Ken Mattingly. The mission control teams on Earth rotated in three shifts, each led by a flight director, the directors for Apollo 8 included Clifford E. Charlesworth, Glynn Lunney, and Milton Windler. The triangular shape of the insignia symbolizes the shape of the Apollo Command Module and it shows a red figure-8 looping around the Earth and Moon representing the mission number as well as the circumlunar nature of the mission. On the red number 8 are the names of the three astronauts, the initial design of the insignia was developed by Jim Lovell. The graphic design of the insignia was done by Houston artist, Apollo 4 and Apollo 6 had been A missions, unmanned tests of the Saturn V launch vehicle using an unmanned Block I production model of the Apollo Command and Service Module in Earth orbit. Apollo 7, scheduled for October 1968, would be a manned Earth-orbit flight of the CSM, further missions depended on the readiness of the Lunar Module. This would mean delaying the D and subsequent missions, endangering the programs goal of a landing before the end of 1969. George Low, the Manager of the Apollo Spacecraft Program Office, since the Command/Service Module would be ready three months before the Lunar Module, a CSM-only mission could be flown in December 1968
27.
Vehicle Assembly Building
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The Vehicle Assembly Building, or VAB, at NASAs Kennedy Space Center is a building designed to assemble large space vehicles, such as the massive Saturn V and the Space Shuttle. The future Space Launch System will also be assembled there, at 3,664,883 cubic meters it is one of the largest buildings in the world by volume. The building is at Launch Complex 39 at KSC, halfway between Jacksonville and Miami, and due east of Orlando on Merritt Island on the Atlantic coast of Florida. The VAB is the largest single-story building in the world, was the tallest building in Florida until 1974, and is still the tallest building in the United States outside an urban area. The VAB, which was completed in 1966, was built to allow for the vertical assembly of the Saturn V rocket for the Apollo program. Once assembled, the complete Space Shuttle was moved on the Mobile Launcher Platform, the VAB is 526 feet tall,716 feet long and 518 feet wide. It covers 8 acres, and encloses 129,428,000 cubic feet of space, despite this, it has received damage from several hurricanes There are four entries to the bays located inside the building, which are the four largest doors in the world. Each door is 456 feet high, has 7 vertical panels and 4 horizontal panels, the north entry that leads to the transfer aisle was widened by 40 feet to allow entry of the shuttle orbiter. A central slot at the entry allowed for passage of the orbiters vertical stabilizer. To lift the components of the Space Transportation System, the VAB housed five overhead bridge cranes, the building has at least 10,000 tons of air conditioning equipment, including 125 ventilators on the roof supported by four large air handlers to keep moisture under control. Air in the building can be replaced every hour. It is 209 feet high, and 110 feet wide, each of the stars on the flag is 6 feet across, the blue field is the size of a regulation basketball court, and each of the stripes is 9 feet wide. Work began in early 2007 to restore the paint on the immense facility. Special attention was paid to the enormous American flag and NASA meatball insignia, the work repaired visible damage from years of storms and weathering. The flag and logo had been repainted in 1998 for NASAs 40th anniversary. Twenty five additional panels were blown off the east side by the winds from Hurricane Jeanne just three weeks later, earlier in the season, Hurricane Charley caused significant but less serious damage, estimated to cost $700,000. Damage caused by hurricanes was still visible in 2007. Some of these panels are punch-outs, designed to detach from the VAB when a pressure differential is created on the outside vs. the inside
28.
Deke Slayton
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After joining NASA, Slayton was selected to pilot the second U. S. manned orbital spaceflight, but was grounded in 1962 by atrial fibrillation, an irregular heart rhythm. He then served as NASAs Director of Flight Crew Operations, making him responsible for crew assignments at NASA from November 1963 until March 1972. This record was surpassed in 1983 by 53-year-old John Young and in 1998 by Slaytons fellow Project Mercury astronaut John Glenn, Slayton died at the age of 69 on June 13,1993, from a malignant brain tumor. Slayton was born on March 1,1924, on a farm near Sparta, Wisconsin, to parents Charles Sherman Slayton and he was of English and Norwegian descent. In 1929, a farm equipment accident left him with a severed left ring finger. He attended elementary school in Leon, Wisconsin, and graduated from Sparta High School in 1942. He entered the United States Army Air Forces as a cadet in 1942, training as a B-25 bomber pilot and received his wings in April 1943 after completing training at Vernon and Waco. Slayton served again as a B-25 instructor for one following the end of the war. After the war, Slayton graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in Aeronautical Engineering from the University of Minnesota and he graduated from the Squadron Officer School at Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama in 1952, at that time an arm of Air Command and Staff College. Returning to the United States in June 1955, Slayton attended and graduated from U. S. Air Force Test Pilot School to become a test pilot at Edwards Air Force Base in California. In his Air Force career, he logged 7,164 hours flying time including more than 5,100 hours in jet aircraft. S, following a gruelling series of physical and psychological tests, NASA selected Slayton to be one of the original group of seven Mercury astronauts. During the summer of 1961, Slayton was diagnosed with a heart rate. Despite his best efforts to overcome this condition, including exercise and lifestyle changes and he ended up as the only of the Mercury Seven to not fly a Mercury mission. When NASA grounded Slayton, the Air Force followed suit and he had the decisive role in choosing the crews for the Gemini and Apollo programs, including the decision of who would be the first person on the Moon. In 1972, Slayton was awarded the Society of Experimental Test Pilots James H. Doolittle Award and he also took massive doses of vitamins, and for a time took daily doses of quinidine, a crystalline alkaloid. Slayton celebrated with an hour of aerobatic maneuvers in a NASA T-38 jet trainer, Slayton resigned as Director of Flight Crew Operations in February 1974. On July 17,1975, the two joined up in orbit, and astronauts Slayton, Thomas P. Stafford and Vance D. Brand conducted crew transfers with cosmonauts Alexey Leonov and Valeri Kubasov, during hospitalization, a lesion was discovered on Slaytons lung and removed
29.
Alan Shepard
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Rear Admiral Alan Bartlett Shepard Jr. was an American astronaut, naval aviator, test pilot, and businessman. A graduate of the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, Shepard saw action with the navy during World War II. He became an aviator in 1946, and a test pilot in 1950. He was selected as one of the original NASA Mercury Seven astronauts in 1959 and his craft entered space, but did not achieve orbit. He became the person, and the first American, to travel into space. In the final stages of Project Mercury, Shepard was scheduled to pilot the Mercury-Atlas 10 and he named Mercury Spacecraft 15B Freedom 7 II in honor of his first spacecraft, but the mission was cancelled. This was surgically corrected in 1969, and in 1971, Shepard commanded the Apollo 14 mission, at age 47, he became the fifth and oldest person to walk on the Moon, and the only one of the Mercury Seven astronauts to do so. During the mission, he hit two balls on the lunar surface. He was Chief of the Astronaut Office from November 1963 to July 1969 and he was promoted to rear admiral on August 25,1971, the first astronaut to reach that rank. Alan Bartlett Shepard Jr. was born on November 18,1923, in Derry, New Hampshire, to Alan B. Shepard Sr. and he had a younger sister, Pauline, who was known as Polly. He was one of famous descendants of Mayflower passenger Richard Warren. His father, Alan B. Shepard Sr. known as Bart, worked in the Derry National Bank and he joined the National Guard in 1915 and served in France with the American Expeditionary Force during World War I. He remained in the National Guard between the wars, and was recalled to duty during World War II, rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel. In 1936, he went to the Pinkerton Academy, a school in Derry that his father had attended. He completed years 9 to 12 there, fascinated by flight, he created a model airplane club at the Academy, and his Christmas present in 1938 was a flight in a Douglas DC-3. The following year he began cycling to Manchester Airfield, where he would do odd jobs in exchange for the ride in an airplane or informal flying lesson. Shepard graduated from the Pinkerton Academy in 1940, because World War II was already raging in Europe, his father wanted him to join the Army. He easily passed the exam to the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis in 1940
30.
Ken Mattingly
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He had been scheduled to fly on Apollo 13, but was held back due to concerns about a potential illness. He later flew as Command Module Pilot for Apollo 16, making him one of only 24 people to have flown to the Moon. Born March 17,1936, in Chicago, Illinois, Mattingly attended school in Hialeah, Florida and he graduated from Miami Edison High School in 1954, and went on to receive a Bachelor of Science degree in Aeronautical Engineering from Auburn University in 1958. He was also a member of Delta Tau Delta fraternity and he joined the U. S. Navy as an Ensign in 1958 and received his aviator wings in 1960. He was then assigned to Attack Squadron Thirty-five at NAS Oceana, Virginia, in July 1963, he served in Heavy Attack Squadron Eleven at NAS Sanford, Florida, where he flew the A-3B Skywarrior aircraft for two years and deployed aboard USS Franklin D. Roosevelt. He has logged 7,200 hours of flight time—which includes 5,000 hours in jet aircraft, Mattingly was a student at the Air Force Aerospace Research Pilot School at Edwards AFB, California when NASA selected him as an astronaut in April 1966. Mattinglys first prime assignment was to be the Command Module Pilot on the Apollo 13 mission, three days prior to launch, he was removed from the mission due to exposure to German measles and was replaced by the backup CM pilot, Jack Swigert. As a result, he missed the dramatic in-flight explosion that crippled the spacecraft, however, Mattingly was involved in helping the crew solve the problem of power conservation during re-entry. The swapout from Apollo 13 placed Mattingly on the crew that would fly Apollo 16, the crew included John W. Young, Mattingly, and Charles M. Duke, Jr. It was Dukes German measles that led to the Mattingly-Swigert swap on Apollo 13, the mission assigned to Apollo 16 was to collect samples from the lunar highlands near the crater Descartes. While in lunar orbit the scientific instruments aboard the Command/Service Module Casper extended the photographic, twenty-six separate scientific experiments were conducted both in lunar orbit and during cislunar coast. Major emphasis was placed on using man as an observer, capitalizing on the human eyes unique capabilities. During the return leg of the mission, Mattingly carried out an activity to retrieve film. Following his return to Earth, Mattingly served in managerial positions in the Space Shuttle development program. Additionally, the crew operated several scientific experiments located in the Orbiters cabin and in the payload bay and this experiment was a pathfinder for the first commercial venture to capitalize on the unique characteristics of space. The crew is also credited with effecting an in-flight repair which enabled them to activate the first operational Getaway Special, sTS-4 completed 112 orbits of the Earth before landing on a concrete runway at Edwards Air Force Base, California, on July 4,1982. STS-51-C, the first Space Shuttle Department of Defense mission, launched from Kennedy Space Center, the crew included Ken Mattingly, Loren Shriver, James Buchli and Ellison Onizuka, and Gary Payton. STS-51-C performed its DOD mission which included deployment of a modified Inertial Upper Stage vehicle from the Space Shuttle Discovery, landing occurred on January 27,1985
31.
Fred W. Haise, Jr.
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Fred Wallace Haise Jr. is an American aeronautical engineer, fighter pilot with the U. S. Marine Corps and the U. S. Air Force, test pilot, and NASA astronaut. He is one of only 24 people to have flown to the Moon and he was to have been the sixth person to land and walk on the Moon, but the Apollo 13 mission was aborted before lunar landing. He went on to fly Space Shuttle Approach and Landing Tests in 1977 and he was a Boy Scout, earning the rank of Star Scout. Eligible for the draft and despite being apprehensive of flying, he joined the aviation cadet training program. Haise underwent Naval Aviator training from 1952 to 1954 and served as a U. S. Marine Corps fighter pilot at MCAS Cherry Point, North Carolina, Haise has accumulated 9,300 hours flying time, including 6,200 hours in jets. He then worked for the newly created NASA, first as a pilot at the Lewis Research Center near Cleveland. His air guard unit was called up during the Berlin Crisis of 1961, Haise completed post-graduate courses at the Aerospace Research Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base, California in 1964, and the Harvard Business Schools Advanced Management Program in 1972. He received an honorary Doctorate of Science from Western Michigan University in 1970, in 1966, Haise was one of 19 new astronauts selected for NASA Astronaut Group 5. He had already been working with NASA for several years as a research pilot. He was the first astronaut among his class to be assigned to a mission, Haise flew as the Lunar Module Pilot on the aborted Apollo 13 lunar mission in 1970. Haise was slated to become the human to walk on the Moon during Apollo 13 behind Lovell. Alan Shepard and Edgar Mitchell eventually became the fifth and sixth, respectively, on Apollo 14, during this flight Fred developed a UTI and later kidney infections. These caused him to be in pain for most of the trip, Haise remained in the astronaut rotation and served as the backup mission Commander for Apollo 16. Though there was no selection, Haise was prospectively slated to command Apollo 19 with William R. Pogue as Command Module Pilot. However, the mission was canceled in late 1970 due to budget cuts, after completing his backup assignment on Apollo 16, Haise moved over to the Space Shuttle program. In 1977, he participated in the programs Approach and Landing Tests at Edwards Air Force Base, along with C. Gordon Fullerton as Pilot, Haise as Commander piloted the Space Shuttle Enterprise in free flight to three successful landings after being released from the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft. These tests successfully verified the flight characteristics, an important step toward the overall success of the program. However, delays in the Shuttle program development as well as an increase in Skylabs orbital decay led to the mission being abandoned
32.
Kennedy Space Center
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The John F. Kennedy Space Center is one of ten National Aeronautics and Space Administration field centers. Since December 1968, Kennedy Space Center has been NASAs primary launch center of human spaceflight, Launch operations for the Apollo, Skylab and Space Shuttle programs were carried out from Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39 and managed by KSC. Located on the east coast of Florida, KSC is adjacent to Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, the management of the two entities work very closely together, share resources, and even own facilities on each others property. Additionally, the center manages launch of robotic and commercial missions, researches food production and In-Situ Resource Utilization for off Earth exploration. Since 2010, the center has worked to become a multi-user spaceport through industry partnerships, there are about 700 facilities grouped across the centers 144,000 acres. There is also a Visitor Complex open to the public on site, the military had been performing launch operations since 1949 at what would become Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. In December 1959, the Department of Defense transferred 5,000 personnel, President John F. Kennedys 1961 goal of a manned lunar landing before 1970 required an expansion of launch operations. On July 1,1962, the Launch Operations Directorate was separated from MSFC to become the Launch Operations Center, therefore, the decision was made to build a new LOC site located adjacent to Cape Canaveral on Merritt Island. NASA began land acquisition in 1962, buying title to 131 square miles, the major buildings in KSCs Industrial Area were designed by architect Charles Luckman. Construction began in November 1962, and Kennedy visited the site twice in 1962, on November 29,1963, the facility was given its current name by President Lyndon B. Johnson under Executive Order 11129. Johnsons order joined both the civilian LOC and the military Cape Canaveral station under the designation John F. Kennedy Space Center, spawning some confusion joining the two in the public mind. Located on Merritt Island, Florida, the center is north-northwest of Cape Canaveral on the Atlantic Ocean and it is 34 miles long and roughly six miles wide, covering 219 square miles. KSC is a major central Florida tourist destination and is one hours drive from the Orlando area. The Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex offers public tours of the center, Center workers can encounter bald eagles, American alligators, wild boars, eastern diamondback rattlesnakes, the endangered Florida panther and Florida manatees. From 1967 through 1973, there were 13 Saturn V launches, the first of two unmanned flights, Apollo 4 on November 9,1967, was also the first rocket launch from KSC. The Saturn Vs first manned launch on December 21,1968 was Apollo 8s lunar orbiting mission, the next two missions tested the Lunar Module, Apollo 9 and Apollo 10. Apollo 11, launched from Pad A on July 16,1969, Apollo 12 followed four months later. From 1970–1972, the Apollo program concluded at KSC with the launches of missions 13 through 17, on May 14,1973, the last Saturn V launch put the Skylab space station in orbit from Pad 39A
33.
Gene Kranz
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Eugene Francis Gene Kranz is an engineer, a retired NASA Flight Director and manager. Kranz has been the subject of movies, documentary films, and books, Kranz is a recipient of a Presidential Medal of Freedom. In a 2010 Space Foundation survey, Kranz was ranked as the #2 most popular space hero, Kranz was born August 17,1933, in Toledo, Ohio and attended Central Catholic High School. He grew up on a farm that overlooked the Willys-Overland Jeep production plant and his father, Leo Peter Kranz, was the son of a German immigrant, and served as an Army medic during World War I. His father died in 1940, when Eugene was only seven years old, Kranz has two older sisters, Louise and Helen. His early fascination with flight was apparent in the topic of his school thesis, entitled The Design. Following his high school graduation in 1951, Kranz went to college. S, Air Force Reserve, completing pilot training at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas in 1955. Shortly after receiving his wings, Kranz married Marta Cadena, a daughter of Mexican immigrants who fled from Mexico during the Mexican Revolution, Kranz was sent to South Korea to fly the F-86 Sabre aircraft for patrol operations around the Korean DMZ. S. Air Force at its Research Center at Holloman Air Force Base, after completing the research tests at Holloman Air Force Base, Kranz left McDonnell-Douglas and joined the NASA Space Task Group, then at its Langley Research Center in Virginia. Upon joining NASA, he was assigned, by flight director Christopher C, kraft, as a Mission Control procedures officer for the unmanned Mercury-Redstone 1 test. Kranz performed this role for all unmanned and manned Mercury flights, including the MR-3 and MA-6 flights, after MA-6, he was promoted to Assistant Flight Director for the MA-7 flight of Scott Carpenter in May 1962. He continued in this role for the remaining two Mercury flights and the first three Gemini flights, after Gemini, he served as a Flight Director on odd-numbered Apollo missions, including Apollos 5,7 and 9, including the first successful unmanned test of the Lunar Module. He was serving as Flight Director for Apollo 11 when the Lunar Module Eagle landed on the Moon on July 20,1969, Kranz is perhaps best known for his role as lead flight director during NASAs Apollo 13 manned Moon landing mission. Kranzs team was on duty when part of the Apollo 13 Service Module exploded and he and his team, as well as the astronauts, received the Presidential Medal of Freedom for their roles. In the 2008 Discovery Channel mini-series When We Left Earth, he throughout the series with his customary flattop haircut. He was in Mission Control during the January 28,1986 loss of Space Shuttle Challenger on the STS-51-L launch and he retired from NASA in 1994 after the successful STS-61 flight that repaired the optically flawed Hubble Space Telescope in 1993. Kranz has six children with his wife, Marta, Carmen, Lucy, Joan Frances, Mark, Brigid, Kranz has appeared as a character in several dramatizations of the Apollo program. The first portrayal was in the 1974 TV movie Houston, Weve Got a Problem and he is played by Ed Harris in the 1995 film Apollo 13, who received an Oscar nomination for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role
34.
Christopher C. Kraft Jr. Mission Control Center
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The center is named after Christopher C. Kraft, Jr. a retired NASA engineer and manager who was instrumental in establishing the agencys Mission Control operation, prime contractor for systems integration at Houston was Philco Corp. selected by NASA in January 1963. The MCC currently houses one operational control room, from flight controllers command, monitor. This room has many computer and data-processing resources to monitor, command, the ISS control room operates continuously. All Mercury–Redstone, Mercury-Atlas, the unmanned Gemini 1 and Gemini 2 and this facility was in the Engineering Support Building at the east end of Mission Control Road, about 0.5 mile east of Phillips Parkway. Mercury and Gemini launches were conducted from separate blockhouses at the Cape, located in Building 30 at the Johnson Space Center, the Houston MCC was first used in June 1965 for Gemini 4. It housed two rooms known as Mission Operation Control Rooms. These two rooms controlled all Gemini, Apollo, Skylab, and Space Shuttle flights up to 1998, each MOCR tier was specialized, staffed by various controllers responsible for a specific spacecraft system. MOCR1, housed on the floor of Building 30, was used for Apollo 7, the Skylab. MOCR2 was used for all other Gemini and Apollo flights and was located on the third floor, as the flight control room for Apollo 11, the first manned moon landing, MOCR2 was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1985. It was last used in 1992 as the control room for STS-53 and was subsequently converted back almost entirely to its Apollo-era configuration. Together with several wings, it is now listed in the National Register of Historic Places as the Apollo Mission Control Center. When the Space Shuttle program began, the MOCRs were re-designated flight control rooms, FCR2 was used mostly for classified Department of Defense shuttle flights, then was remodeled to its Apollo-era configuration. From the moment a space shuttle cleared its launch tower in Florida until it landed on Earth, when a shuttle mission was underway, its control room was staffed around the clock, usually in three shifts. In 1992, JSC began building an extension to Building 30, the new five-story section went operational in 1998 and houses two flight control rooms, designated White, and Blue. The White FCR was used in tandem with FCR2 for seven missions, STS-70 through STS-76. When not in use for the program, the White FCR was reconfigured as a backup for the ISS FCR from time to time as needed. The newer section of Building 30 also houses the International Space Station Flight Control Room, the first ISS control room, originally named the Special Vehicles Operations Room, then the Blue FCR, was operational around the clock to support the ISS until the fall of 2006
35.
Saturn V
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The Saturn V was an American human-rated expendable rocket used by NASA between 1967 and 1973. The Saturn V was launched 13 times from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida with no loss of crew or payload, to date, the Saturn V remains the only launch vehicle to launch missions to carry humans beyond low Earth orbit. A total of 15 flight-capable vehicles were built, but only 13 were flown, an additional three vehicles were built for ground testing purposes. A total of 24 astronauts were launched to the Moon, three of them twice, in the four years spanning December 1968 through December 1972 and it was known that Americas rival, the Soviet Union, would also try to secure some of the Germans. Von Braun was put into the design division of the Army due to his prior direct involvement in the creation of the V-2 rocket. Between 1945 and 1958, his work was restricted to conveying the ideas, finally, they turned to von Braun and his team, who during these years created and experimented with the Jupiter series of rockets. The Juno I was the rocket launched the first American satellite in January 1958. The Jupiter series was one step in von Brauns journey to the Saturn V. The Saturn Vs design stemmed from the designs of the Jupiter series rockets, as the success of the Jupiter series became evident, the Saturn series emerged. Between 1960 and 1962, the Marshall Space Flight Center designed a series of Saturn rockets that could be used for various Earth orbit or lunar missions. NASA planned to use the C-3 as part of the Earth Orbit Rendezvous concept, the C-4 would need only two launches to carry out an EOR lunar mission. On January 10,1962, NASA announced plans to build the C-5. The three-stage rocket would consist of, the S-IC first stage, with five F-1 engines, the S-II second stage, with five J-2 engines, the C-5 was designed for a 90, 000-pound payload capacity to the Moon. The C-5 would undergo component testing even before the first model was constructed, by testing all components at once, far fewer test flights would be required before a manned launch. The C-5 was confirmed as NASAs choice for the Apollo program in early 1963, the C-1 became the Saturn I, and C-1B became Saturn IB. Von Braun headed a team at the Marshall Space Flight Center in building a vehicle capable of launching a spacecraft on a trajectory to the Moon. Before they moved under NASAs jurisdiction, von Brauns team had begun work on improving the thrust, creating a less complex operating system. It was during these revisions that the decision to reject the single engine of the V-2s design came about, the Saturn I and IB reflected these changes, but were not large enough to send a manned spacecraft to the Moon
36.
Transposition, docking, and extraction
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Transposition, docking, and extraction was a maneuver performed during manned Apollo program missions from 1969 to 1972, and the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project mission in 1975. The CSMs translation thrusters were used to move it a distance away. Rotation thrusters were used to pitch up the CSM 180°. Translation thrusters were used to move it back to the LM. A T-shaped docking target on the top of the LM aligned optically with a pattern on the CMPs left-hand docking window to ensure proper spacecraft alignment. A soft dock was achieved when a probe at the top of the CSM was inserted into a hole in the center of a cone-shaped drogue at the top of the LM and three small capture latches closed. Hard dock was achieved by activating a mechanism which retracted the probe, a pressure equalization valve in the CM forward hatch was opened to allow oxygen to fill the LM through a similar valve in its hatch that was left open at launch. He then replaced the CM hatch, the astronauts were in no hurry to complete this maneuver, which nominally took about an hour. Transposition and docking was performed on all Apollo missions which carried both the CSM and the LM, from Apollo 9 onward, Transposition and a mock LM-docking approach was first simulated on the Earth-orbiting Apollo 7 flight. The Block I SLA used on the early Saturn IB launch vehicles had panels that opened at a 45° angle, one of the panels did not open the full angle, preventing the crew from approaching the S‑IVB for fear they might strike this panel. This was corrected with the Block II SLA design used on all manned Saturn V Apollo flights, manned Venus Flyby – a transposition and docking maneuver would have been required on this mission Apollo 15 Flight Journal, Transposition, Docking and Extraction
37.
Apollo Command/Service Module
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The Command/Service Module was one of two spacecraft, along with the Lunar Module, used for the United States Apollo program which landed astronauts on the Moon. It was built for NASA by North American Aviation and it was launched by itself on three suborbital and low Earth orbit Apollo test missions using the Saturn IB launch vehicle. It was also launched twelve times on the larger Saturn V launch vehicle and it made a total of nine manned flights to the Moon aboard the Saturn V. The Service Module was cast off and allowed to burn up in the atmosphere before the Command Module re-entered, the Apollo 1 flight was cancelled after a cabin fire killed the entire crew and destroyed the Command Module during a launch rehearsal test. Corrections of the problems caused the fire were applied to the Block II spacecraft. Therefore, design proceeded without a means of docking the Command Module to a Lunar Excursion Module, but the change to lunar orbit rendezvous, plus several technical obstacles encountered in some subsystems, soon made it clear that substantial redesign would be required. Block II would be the version, including a docking hatch and incorporating weight reduction. Detailed design of the docking capability depended on design of the LEM, by January 1964, North American started presenting Block II design details to NASA. Block I spacecraft were used for all unmanned Saturn 1B and Saturn V test flights, initially two manned flights were planned, but this was reduced to one in late 1966. This mission, designated AS-204 but named Apollo 1 by its crew, was planned for launch on February 21,1967. After a thorough investigation by the Apollo 204 Review Board, it was decided to terminate the manned Block I phase, the two blocks were essentially similar in overall dimensions, but several design improvements resulted in weight reduction in Block II. Also, the Block I Service Module propellant tanks were slightly larger than in Block II, the Apollo 1 spacecraft weighed approximately 45,000 pounds, while the Block II Apollo 7 weighed 36,400 lb. In the specifications given below, unless noted, all weights given are for the Block II spacecraft. The total cost of the CSM for development and the produced was $36. 9B in 2016 dollars. The Command Module was a truncated cone 10 feet 7 inches tall with a diameter of 12 feet 10 inches across the base, the forward compartment contained two reaction control engines, the docking tunnel, and the components of the Earth Landing System. The inner pressure vessel housed the crew accommodations, equipment bays, controls and displays, the last section, the aft compartment, contained 10 reaction control engines and their related propellant tanks, fresh water tanks, and the CSM umbilical cables. The Command Module consisted of two basic structures joined together, the structure and the outer structure. The inner structure was a sandwich construction which consisted of a welded aluminum inner skin, adhesively bonded aluminum honeycomb core
38.
Apollo Lunar Module
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After completing its mission, the LM was discarded. It was capable of only in outer space, structurally and aerodynamically it was incapable of flight through the Earths atmosphere. The Lunar Module was the first manned spacecraft to operate exclusively in the vacuum of space. It was the first, and to date only, crewed vehicle to land on an object in the solar system other than the Earth. Six such craft successfully landed on the Moon between 1969 and 1972, a seventh provided propulsion and life support for the crew of Apollo 13 when their CSM was disabled by an oxygen tank explosion en route to the Moon. The LMs development was plagued with problems which delayed its first unmanned flight by about ten months, despite this, the LM eventually became the most reliable component of the Apollo/Saturn space vehicle, the only component never to suffer a failure that significantly affected a mission. The total cost of the LM for development and the produced was $21. 3B in 2016 dollars. At launch, the Lunar Module sat directly beneath the Command/Service Module with legs folded, there it remained through earth parking orbit and the Trans Lunar Injection rocket burn to send the craft toward the Moon. Soon after TLI, the SLA opened and the CSM separated, turned around, came back to dock with the Lunar Module, during the flight to the Moon, the docking hatches were opened and the LM Pilot entered the LM to temporarily power up and test its systems. Throughout the flight, he performed the role of an engineering officer, at this point, the engine was started again for Powered Descent Initiation. During this time the crew flew on their backs, depending on the computer to slow the crafts forward, Control was exercised with a combination of engine throttling and attitude thrusters, guided by the computer with the aid of landing radar. During the braking phase altitude decreased to approximately 10,000 feet, during final approach, the vehicle pitched over to a near-vertical position, allowing the crew to look forward and down to see the lunar surface for the first time. Finally the landing began, approximately 2,000 feet uprange of the targeted landing site. Beginning with Apollo 14, increased LM fuel was available for the powered descent and landing, by using the CSM engine to achieve the 50. After the spacecraft undocked, the CSM raised and circularized its orbit for the remainder of the mission. When ready to leave the Moon, the LM would separate the descent stage and fire the ascent engine to back into orbit. After a few course correction burns, the LM would rendezvous with the CSM and dock for transfer of the crew, having completed its job, the LM was separated and sent into solar orbit or to crash into the Moon. The Lunar Module was designed after NASA chose to reach the Moon via Lunar Orbit Rendezvous instead of the ascent or Earth Orbit Rendezvous methods
39.
Liquid oxygen
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Liquid oxygen—abbreviated LOx, LOX or Lox in the aerospace, submarine and gas industries—is one of the physical forms of elemental oxygen. Liquid oxygen has a blue color and is strongly paramagnetic. Liquid oxygen has a density of 1.141 g/cm3 and is cryogenic with a point of 54.36 K. Because of its nature, liquid oxygen can cause the materials it touches to become extremely brittle. Liquid oxygen is also a powerful oxidizing agent, organic materials will burn rapidly and energetically in liquid oxygen. Further, if soaked in liquid oxygen, some such as coal briquettes, carbon black, etc. can detonate unpredictably from sources of ignition such as flames. Petrochemicals, including asphalt, often exhibit this behavior, the tetraoxygen molecule was first predicted in 1924 by Gilbert N. Lewis, who proposed it to explain why liquid oxygen defied Curies law. Modern computer simulations indicate that there are no stable O4 molecules in liquid oxygen, O2 molecules do tend to associate in pairs with antiparallel spins. Conversely, liquid nitrogen or liquid air can be oxygen-enriched by letting it stand in air, atmospheric oxygen dissolves in it. In commerce, liquid oxygen is classified as a gas and is widely used for industrial and medical purposes. Liquid oxygen is obtained from the oxygen found naturally in air by fractional distillation in an air separation plant. Liquid oxygen is a cryogenic liquid oxidizer propellant for spacecraft rocket applications, usually in combination with liquid hydrogen. Liquid oxygen is useful in this role because it creates a specific impulse. It was used in the very first rocket applications like the V2 missile and Redstone, R-7 Semyorka, Atlas boosters, many modern rockets use liquid oxygen, including the main engines on the now-retired Space Shuttle. U. S. Army has long recognized the importance of liquid oxygen. In 1985 it started a program of building its own facilities at all major consumption bases. By 1845, Michael Faraday had managed to liquefy most gases then known to exist, six gases, however, resisted every attempt at liquefaction and were known at the time as permanent gases. They were oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, carbon monoxide, methane, in 1877, Louis Paul Cailletet in France and Raoul Pictet in Switzerland succeeded in producing the first droplets of liquid air
40.
John Aaron
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John W. Aaron is a former NASA engineer and was a flight controller during the Apollo program. John Aaron was born in Wellington, Texas and grew up in rural Western Oklahoma near Vinson and his mother was a minister, and his father was a cattle rancher. After spending a year attending Bethany Nazarene College, he transferred to Southwestern Oklahoma State University, although he had intended to teach mathematics and science after graduating from college, he applied for a job with NASA on the recommendation of a friend. When he arrived at NASA, Aaron was trained as an EECOM, by January 19,1965, when the unmanned Gemini 2 was launched, he was already working in Mission Control. When Apollo 12 launched on November 14,1969, Aaron was on shift, thirty-six seconds after liftoff, the spacecraft was struck by lightning, causing a power surge. Instruments began to malfunction and telemetry data became garbled, the flight director, Gerry Griffin, expected that he would have to abort the mission. However, Aaron realized that he had seen this odd pattern of telemetry. A year before the flight, Aaron had been observing a test at Kennedy Space Center when he had noticed some unusual telemetry readings, Aaron surmised that this setting would also return the Apollo 12 telemetry to normal. When he made the recommendation to the Flight Director, Flight, try SCE to Aux, both the flight director and the CapCom asked him to repeat the recommendation. Pete Conrads response to the order was, What the hell is that, fortunately Alan Bean was familiar with the location of the SCE switch inside the capsule, and flipped it to auxiliary. Telemetry was immediately restored, allowing the mission to continue and this earned Aaron the lasting respect of his colleagues, who declared that he was a steely-eyed missile man. Aaron was off duty when the Apollo 13 explosion occurred, but was called to Mission Control to assist in the rescue. Flight Director Gene Kranz put Aaron in charge of the Lunar Modules power supply and he was allowed to veto the ideas of the engineers, particularly when they affected the power usage of the modules. The call was a calculated risk, without the instrumentation system, the crew and controllers would not know for certain if the cold startup had been successful until the last possible moment before reentry. However without this sequence change, the capsule would have exhausted its battery supply before splashdown, the procedure was a success, and the crew was recovered safely. After the Apollo program ended, Aaron remained at NASA and he worked on the Skylab program, and was involved with the development of the Space Shuttle software. Starting during 1984, he worked on the abortive Space Station Freedom project, four years later, however, he was forced to resign from the job after Texas Senator Robert Krueger blamed him for $500 million of overspending on the station project. Aaron became a manager in Johnson Space Centers Engineering Directorate during 1993, Aaron is a former mayor of Meadowlakes, Texas
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This article incorporates public domain material from websites or documents of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
