This is the crew gantry used by the Apollo 11 crew to enter the command module, high aloft the Saturn V launch tower. It now lives in the rocket park at Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex.

And here I am, standing where heroes once walked:

This spectacular excessively-sized image shows Apollo 17 lifting off in the first night launch of a Saturn V, on December 7, 1972. (Image via the Project Apollo Archive.) I don’t think I’ve ever watched video footage of a Saturn V launch without palpitating. That thing is colossal — it will always be awe-inspiring to me.

I remember when I was growing up, I firmly believed we’d be going back to the Moon at any moment. Real soon, now. I wish I could go back to that.

This was a recent NASA Image of the Day — I love the colors, and the nostalgia…. Soon I’ll be nostalgic over the shuttle program, and that makes me a bit ill. In the same way I marvel over bits of shuttle being hoisted here and there in the VAB, I’m amazed to see chunks of rocket in the air like this. I know they have to assemble themselves somehow, it’s just still… amazing to me, to see such big pieces of hardware lifted up. I’m amazed by skyscrapers too, fwiw.

This image from 1967 shows the S-II stage of the Saturn V rocket as it was hoisted onto the A-2 test stand at the Mississippi Test Facility (now the Stennis Space Center). This was the second stage of the 364-foot tall moon rocket, which was powered by five J-2 engines.

These are some of the images I used to stare at in the pages of Cosmos, when I was a child. I was fond of the Saturn V launch photos, the dynamic motion, the flames…. I also liked the Voyager images of Jupiter’s moons. Callisto always looked like goldstone to me. I spent my formative years drawing rockets and moons; no wonder I’m such a space cadet!

…a Saturn V launched toward the Moon. Over the next few days I will be sharing photos from Apollo 11, in celebration of the 40th anniversary of the first Moon landing.

And here’s the official logo!

This turned into an exclusively-art picspam post because I only discovered this artist today, via Andrew Chaikin’s newly-launched blog. The artist is Paul Calle, one of the original artists contracted by NASA to document the space program, illustrator of I think every Apollo-era stamp I own, and the brilliant mind behind the pieces you see here. I’m absolutely captivated by the above, Power to GO — the canvas literally looks like it’s melting from the heat of liftoff.

The above is The Great Moment, a 4′x8′ piece (note: those are FEET, not inches), and the below is better known as a 1969 stamp, First Man on the Moon.

Watch Steve Eves rocket into the history books — a spectacularly successful launch of the world’s largest model rocket!

This model rocket is the stuff dreams are made of, and sports engines so large that I didn’t think they’d gone that far down the alphabet yet (rocket motors are alphabetically-graded. Last time I checked into it, the largest was an O. This one is sporting a P, and an experimental Q sent a rocket to 100,000 feet.)

But the article above puts it best:

Placed together side by side in the aft end of the forty-inch wide rocket, the motor tubes that will house all of these rocket engines look small and insignificant. But these nine motors will provide more than 8,000 pounds of thrust—enough power to pick up a Volkswagen Beetle and throw it a half mile through the air.

Weather and equipment cooperating, this big bird will fly on Saturday, and if successful, Steve Eves will have flown the largest model rocket in history. Godspeed, Steve!

Article found via OhGizmo!.