Sharing one of my all-time favourites today: the time I got a pic with Dick Gordon and Al Bean, the command module pilot and lunar module pilot of Apollo 12 respectively, in 2013 or 2014. A quick personal thread!

If you've followed me for any length of time, you know Apollo 12 is my favourite mission and that's entirely because of the crew. When I was in the sixth or seventh grade, From the Earth to the Moon first aired on TV.

It was on late on a weeknight, but I put it on my calendar to remember to record it, which I did, and watched it Saturday mornings. My mom found my old calendar recently and it's the November 16 entry!

The Apollo 12 episode struck me because the crew is portrayed as being so human. On the power of that episode, I picked up Pete Conrad's posthumous biography, as well as a whack of other Apollo era histories and memoirs, and they all said Apollo 12 was the fun mission.

In retrospect, it taught me the power of human-centered storytelling as a way to communicate history and science. I didn't know it then but it was probably something that defined my future career. And I got to tell Dick and Al how important their mission was to me!

Here's the Apollo 12 crew before their 1969 lunar mission, from left Pete Conrad, Dick Gordon, and Al Bean.

And rounding it out, a gratuitous cute pic of my cat, Pete Conrad, who does have his own surname, and who I call Charles when he's being especially destructive around the house!