CollectSpace reports that Mercury Icon Gunther Wendt has passed away.  He was 85.  Gunther became iconic after NASA Astronauts began quipping "I wonder where Gunther Wendt?"  Always beloved by them, Wendt was good natured about all the ribbing because of his stubborn, yet professional attitude towards safety. 

A true legend, he will be missed.

Godspeed, Guenther.

Sad news has come that Stan Lebar, developer of the lunar TV camera has passed away.  Stan was a guest of Conversations with Apollo in 2008, and as a tribute to him, we present a rerun of one of our most interesting interviews.

You can listen to it here.

RIP, Stan.  We couldn't have seen the moon without you.

Walter Cronkite has passed away at 92, after suffering from a long illness.  He was once known as "The Most Trusted Man in America."  He was NASA's number one fan.  He was Walter Cronkite.  And with his trusted sidekick's Eric Severeid and Mercury/Gemini/Apollo veteran Wally Schirra, Cronkite covered every mission and was THE news anchor that America turned to for news - especially when it came to landing on the moon.

Godspeed, Walter.  Thanks for the coverage.

When born on July 20th, it's not really surprising to end up working for NASA during the Apollo Program.  Paul Haney, NASA's first news director died this week of cancer. Known for his "cool and detached voice," as Time Magazine put it, Haney served from Mercury to Apollo and was known as the "voice of Mission Control." 

From the Orlando Sentinel:

Joseph J. Mazzochi, a longtime Huntington resident and electrical engineer who worked on Grumman Corp.'s Lunar Excursion Module, which carried astronauts to the moon's surface in 1969, died Saturday at his home with his wife, Carol, at his side He was 81.

During his career at Grumman, he worked on the communication systems for the F-14 Tomcat fighter jet as well as the lunar module, known as the LEM, which carried astronauts from the Apollo spacecraft to the moon. He retired in 1989.

"He was very proud of his work with the LEM," Carol Mazzochi said, adding that he was at NASA's Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston when the LEM descended to the moon's surface.

German rocket pioneer Konrad Dannenberg passed away on Monday at age 96. As one of the last surviving members of Wernher von Braun's team, Dannenberg participated in the design the Redstone, which ultimately launched the Alan Shepard and Gus Grisssom into their suborbital Mercury missionss. 

Dannenberg also served as NASA's deputy manager for the Saturn program.

We had hoped to interview Mr. Dannenberg, but sadly that opportunity has passed, but we are hopeful that his story will live on in the pantheon of Apollo lore.

R.I.P.

According to CollectSpace, Astronaut John Bull died on August 14th. He was 73.

Selected in 1966 with NASA's fifth group of astronauts, Bull's class of 19 trainees, dubbed the "Original 19", also included future moonwalkers Charles Duke, James Irwin and Edgar Mitchell.

Training for an assignment as a lunar module pilot, Bull was named with Irwin in early 1967 to the crew of LTA-8, a thermal vacuum test of the moon lander. Citing sinus problems however, Bull was replaced by his backup prior to the test starting at the Space Enviroment Simulation Laboratory in Houston, Texas.

Together with Thomas Mattingly and Gerald Carr, Bull was then named on November 20, 1967 to the support crew for the second Apollo manned flight of the Saturn V, to assist prime and backup crew members — including Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins — as they trained.

Ultimately, that mission with its crew of Jim Lovell, Frank Borman and Bill Anders would launch in December 1968 as Apollo 8, becoming the first manned flight to orbit the Moon.

Bull would leave the astronaut corps before then however, never flying in space himself. Diagnosed with a rare pulmonary disease, he was forced to resign in July 1968.

Bull is survived by his wife, Nancy, and their two children Scott and Whitney.

Still yet another reason to get these stories told.  So, if you know anyone who wants to tell their story of their work on Apollo, Gemini, Mercury, or even Skylab, please drop us a line at apollotalks at gmail dot com.

Dr. Ernst Stuhlinger, former director of science at the Marshall Space Flight Center has died at the tender age of 94.

Dr. Stuhlinger was one of the original German rocket scientists that came to the United States with Von Braun and served as Braunie's chief scientist in developing the Saturn V.

In the 1950s, he conceived what would eventually become the Hubble Space Telescope ...

If we're building space exploration on "the shoulders of giants," Dr.Ernst Stuhlinger would be one of them.


New episode of Conversations with Apollo coming this week. Stay tuned.