Technical Session 11 Some people were on the inside of the American space program, hands-on, up-close and fully involved in the exciting era when man first left the earth for outer space- but the rest of us slobs had to watch it on TV. The “Growing up with Spaceflight” presentation will involve the fun and sometimes humorous aspects of those of us who were space-buffs, yet relegated to watching the program from the outside. No doubt most of us can relate to those days of fuzzy black and white TV images from the Cape, captured from out of the airwaves by tinfoil-wrapped rabbit ear antennas and presented on one of the three networks. Between missions we rode our bicycles to the local hobby store and spent the money that we earned mowing lawns on bagged rockets kits and hands full of B6-4 engines. With one hand holding the kits to the handlebars and a pocket full of engines we rode back home and proceeded to build our own space program. We launched missions that Cronkite, McGee and Bergman would never cover. Of course those massive engineering efforts normally ended up on a power line or eaten by a neighbor’s tree, but that was a key component of growing up with spaceflight. A trip back to those days is what the “Growing up with Spaceflight” presentation is all about. Join us as we all take some time to be a kid again and look back at a time when we launched US astronauts from US soil aboard US rockets. With author Wes Oleszewski of Dr. Zooch Rockets.