50 years
Enough of you young guys. Here's an old geezer story. I covered the space program for CBC Television News from Mercury through most of Apollo, the first group fighter pilot jocks, the latter mostly boring electrical engineers except for Aldrin. Bob Gilruth, head NASA Manned Spacecraft Centre, recruited 25 engineers who built our scrapped Arrow fighter. Owen Maynard of Sarnia, Ontario, became command module chief and Jim Chamberlain, Kamloops, British Columbia, chief lunar lander. Gilruth had a two-foot Arrow model on his desk, said it was "the best fighter ever built." (US wouldn't buy it.) Owen told me his brains didn't get him the job. Tasked with investigating rocket failures, he apportioned blame discreetly among manufacturers. We were having dinner at his home when the Cape called to say Grissom, Chaffee and White were killed in command module fire on the gantry. For an idea how old I was, I asked Glenn what was a 43-year-old Marine pilot doing in space. He said it's nothing to do with derring-do but doing the right thing the first time.