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I'll chip in....

-- My first space memory was watching John Glenn's flight in February 1962. I was 6. Mom had to go to the dentist that day (not sure why I wasn't in school...) and they had the TV on at the dentist's office. I remember being amazed that people could actually make out what Glenn was saying. It just sounded like static to me.

-- In July '69, my late brother was stationed in the USAF in Oregon. We drove out from Illinois to visit him and watched the moon landing and moon walk from his house. I remember it was hard to tell what was going on because the picture seemed so grainy.

-- By this time, I was really into modeling, and used my paper route money to buy every space model out there. Even made a big (probably 3'x3') moon base with plaster of Paris so I could display my Revell 1/48th scale Lunar Module. Then decided I wanted to add a Surveyor to depict Apollo 12, so I scratchbuilt one. Since I lived in small-town Illinois and the closest hobby shop was miles and miles away, I made Surveyor's tubular frame out of uncooked spaghetti. The model was fragile, but it looked pretty decent. I've always wanted to tackle Ton Noteboom's Surveyor....

-- My mom was the librarian in our hometown and every summer she had a kids' reading program. One summer -- can't recall the year but it was during the Apollo years -- the theme was "Space." So mom wrote a letter to NASA and said, "Is there anything you could loan to us to display?" This was a library in a no-name town of 2,700 in East Central Illinois, mind you. So one day, a truck pulls up to the library and they wheel in a crate; inside was a mannequin wearing a FULL APOLLO SPACESUIT. I think mom's eyes popped out of her head, and I know mine did. She had it for the entire summer. My job during the summer was to clean the library in the mornings before it opened, and more than once I was tempted to try on the spacesuit (how hard could it be to unzip it and take the mannequin out?) but I never did. I was smart, for once.

-- In the summer of '71, my folks decided to take a two-week drive to the East Coast, so I talked them into putting Florida on the trip and we got to see the launch of Apollo 15. Even from miles away, a Saturn V launch was damn impressive.

-- In April '81, I was a reporter covering federal courts for the Brownsville Herald in Texas. I was in the courthouse when Columbia was supposed to launch, so I persuaded U.S. District Judge James DeAnda to let me watch the launch on the TV in his chambers. Since I was a full-fledged space geek, I was able to provide a running commentary....

-- By 1982, I was working at The Dallas Morning News. I persuaded my editor to send me to cover the launch of the first Conestoga rocket on Matagorda Island in September 1982. Got to meet Deke Slayton. In fact, I went back later to do an in-depth profile of him, spending several days with him in Houston. Interesting guy. An engineer through and through. Asked him about the T-38 barrel roll he did on Columbia's first landing, which basically ushered his exit from NASA. In the course of the story, I interviewed several other astronauts (Tom Stafford I recall for sure, and Gordon Cooper and maybe others, but my memory is hazy) and it's kind of cool to hang up the phone, turn to a co-worker and say, "I just spoke to one of the seven Mercury astronauts."

-- In June '85, I got to cover the launch of Discovery on STS-51-G. It was carrying a "Getaway Special" (remember those?) experiment from some high school kids in El Paso. From the press site, a shuttle launch was something that photos or videos just don't prepare you for. For one thing, the RSRMs burn so brightly that you can't look directly at them. Film or video seems to correct for that. But in person, it's like looking directly at the sun. You can't do it. And a shuttle launch was something you felt as much as saw. The rumbling reverberated through you. You actually felt it inside.

-- When Challenger disintigrated, I was among the reporters my paper sent on the first flight out to Houston and we spent several days camped out at JSC. It was a madhouse. Nobody knew anything. After three days or so, I got dispatched to cover the recovery effort from KSC. I tell people I spent a week a mile or so from the shore and never once saw the ocean.

-- By the time of the Columbia disaster, I was working in the Twin Cities. I was cleaning the house that Saturday because my wife at the time was coming home later that morning from a three-month stay in Germany. Watched the news on CNN. Had I still been working in Dallas, I no doubt would have been sent to East Texas. I'd been to Toledo Bend and Sabine County plenty of times on other stories, so when they were talking about pieces of Columbia falling out of the sky, I knew where they were landing. Picked up my then-wife from the airport. She hadn't heard anything about the disaster.