The Central Coast has a long history with space travel. Check out these 9 memorable moments
Astronauts have long been ambassadors for the space program.
It takes a team of smart people and a big budget to fly a rocket into space. But funding has been subject to the whims of congress.
From the beginning, astronauts have been the public face of the program and the ones putting their lives on the line for their missions.
Critics of spaceflight see a finite world and have other programs they would like to see the money allocated for or not spent at all. But the space program has changed the way we all live. Smaller and faster computers are just one example.
The original Apollo Guidance Computer had a tiny 74 KB of ROM memory and 4 KB of RAM — about the power of a contemporary pocket calculator. Automobiles today have more computing power onboard than Apollo did.
When I was growing up, astronauts were among the last heroes in an era of disillusion and anti-heros.
On Earth we had war, poverty, discrimination and scandal. In space we could imagine a place that was not tainted by human foibles.
Since then, we have found that some astronauts can be flawed, or lost to tragic circumstances.
But astronauts also carry our best impulses and at its best, the space program is an exploration of our largest human aspirations: to explore the edges of what is known.
Here are a few notable moments when space has intersected with the Central Coast.
Dec. 16, 1958
The first missile launch from what-was-then Vandenberg Air Force Base was a Thor intermediate-range ballistic missile. The base was created from the former U.S. Army garrison Camp Cooke, first established in August 1940.
March 24, 1962
President John F. Kennedy visits Vandenberg Air Force Base to see a rocket launch.
In September that year, he would give a speech at Rice University announcing, “We choose to go to the moon.”
The United States had lagged far behind the Soviet Union in achieving space milestones, and learning from the civilian program would also overlap into military applications. And the path goes both ways: Many astronauts started their aviation careers as military pilots.
May 18, 1968
John Glenn, a World War II and Korean War pilot campaigned for Robert F. Kennedy Sr. during La Fiesta.
Glenn was the first American to orbit Earth during the February 1962 Friendship 7 mission. He would later fly on the Space Shuttle STS-95 mission in October 1998.
He is the oldest person to venture into space and the only Mercury and Space Shuttle astronaut. In between trips into space, he was a U.S. senator.
October 10, 1970
Astronaut Walter Cunningham was grand marshal for the Harvest Festival in Arroyo Grande. He was the pilot for Apollo 7 in October 1968, a test flight for systems used to land on the moon and the first effective television transmission of crew activities. Kids dressed up as astronauts in the parade.
June 9, 1989
Cal Poly graduate Robert “Hoot” Gibson made several trips to San Luis Obispo County and while in space was often photographed with Cal Poly memorabilia in the background.
The 1969 aeronautical engineering graduate brought a Poly pennant that had been carried into space on the shuttle Atlantis as a gift to then-Cal Poly President Warren Baker.
The Vietnam veteran pilot had flown over 100 airplanes and five space shuttle missions.
He flew aboard Challenger, Columbia, Atlantis (twice) and Endeavour. He would also be on the commission that investigated the Challenger explosion that killed the crew of seven.
April 6, 2001
Buzz Aldrin, the second man on the moon and perhaps the best nickname of any astronaut — his real name being Edwin Eugene Aldrin — visited both Paso Robles and Arroyo Grande high schools speaking to their Endeavour academies.
He told Arroyo Grande students that the most moving moment on the trip was when the lunar lander engine shut off and they were on the surface of the moon. He said walking on the moon was significant, but like any pilot he liked to fly.
“The big deal was landing that sucker on the moon,” he said.
April 18, 2022
Vice President Kamala Harris visited Vandenberg Space Force Base to speak about the dangers of space junk accumulating in orbit and the end to anti-satellite missile tests.
Dec., 13, 2022
Paso Robles and Cal Poly team up to apply to license a spaceport at the site of the Paso Robles airport.
May 29, 2024
Victor Glover, Jr. has made four space walks and several visits to Cal Poly where he graduated from the engineering program in 1999.
He was a US. Navy test and combat pilot before joining NASA. He has more than 3,500 flight hours in more than 40 aircraft.
He will be the pilot and one of four astronauts on the first mission to the moon in more than 50 years in 2025.
