Ad Astra Features Encyclopedia-Style Articles About 161 People with Connections to the Sunflower State
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NEW! for your library! 999 KANSAS 999 KANSAS CHARACTERS CHARACTERS A biographical series A biographical series Our newest book is off the press and available for sale! First in a planned series, 999 Kansas Characters: Ad Astra features encyclopedia-style articles about 161 people with connections to the Sunflower State. Colorfully AD ASTRA illustrated with photographs and artwork, this volume Adventurers, astronauts, discoverers, explorers, pilots, pioneers, scientists includes well-known Kansas characters — George 161 Washington Carver, Amelia Earhart, Martin and Osa Johnson, and the Sternberg family — plus dozens of others you’ll want to meet. Coming later in 2015: 999 Kansas Characters: Movers & Shakers! AD ASTRA Adventurers, astronauts, discoverers, Dave Webb Terry Rombeck Beccy Tanner 161 explorers, pilots, pioneers, scientists Original artwork by Phillip R. Buntin Original photography by Craig Hacker 144 pages, 9 x 12 inches, illustrated, indexed, with an extensive bibliography. AD ASTRA is available in both softcover (retail $24.95) and hardcover ($34.95). KANSAS HERITAGE CENTER, PO Box 1207, Dodge City, Kansas 67801-1207 620-227-1616 Engle–Evans to be operating the plane, and if they posed for photos The Lockheed Vega High-flying Jayhawk three years later earned his pilot’s wings commanded one of two crews that flew Flew farthest from Kansas The National Aeronautics and Space Let’s get real • As is the case with Biographer Candace Fleming together, Amelia should be to her right — to insure that 5B that Earhart through the rotc program. In 1956 the new space shuttle’s approach and Administration termed Apollo 17 the most celebrities, not everything discovered that the naturally curly hair Earhart’s name would be listed first in the caption. The girl used for her 1932 he married Mission Hills native Mary landing test flights in 1977. Released most productive and trouble-free of published about Amelia Earhart is Earhart claimed to have was created turned down his request. Rumors later circulated that before transatlantic flight Joseph ‘Joe’ Engle Catherine Lawrence in Kansas City. from atop a Boeing 747 jumbo jet, Ronald ‘Ron’ Evans America’s six manned moon land- true. And research has shown that each day with a curling iron. Fleming the race he arranged secret flying lessons for Amelia. is preserved in The couple moved to California Engle and other astronauts checked ings — but it was the last in the series. some of the hype surrounding her was also learned Earhart’s quiet and shy Earhart was one of nineteen contestants when the derby the Smithsonian Astronaut, pilot, serviceman • Chapman, where Joe trained at the U.S. Air Force the Enterprise’s airworthiness in making Astronaut, pilot, serviceman, business Cuts to nasa’s budget caused the “enhanced” or even fabricated by her behavior in public masked her very began at Santa Monica, California. The next day she over- National Air and Lawrence • (Born 1932) • From an early Test Pilot School. There he caught glide landings before it was launched executive • Saint Francis, Topeka, Lawrence cancellation of three more planned publicist husband or Earhart herself. outspoken and sometimes blunt per- shot the runway at a refueling stop in Arizona. On the sev- Space Museum. age, Joseph Henry Engle wanted to fly. the attention of fellow pilot Chuck into earth orbit. • (1933–1990) • “I’ve a feeling we’re not in missions. In her 1932 autobiography The Fun of sonality in private. She could also be a enth and final day, she made a poor landing at the finish line Yeager — the first human to fly faster Then when Columbia, the first shut- Kansas anymore,” said Dorothy Gale to On Apollo 17’s return flight to Earth, It, for example, Amelia recalled seeing fierce competitor. in Cleveland, Ohio. Although she had the fastest plane in the I was always interested in airplanes, than the speed of sound. The famed tle to return to space, made its second her dog Toto in the classic 1939 movie Evans spent sixty-six minutes outside her first plane at the 1908 Iowa State Fleming found this Earhart quote: “I contest, she finished third. To some of the other contestants, ‘‘always sketching and drawing planes, test pilot was commander of the new orbital flight in November 1981, Engle The Wizard of Oz. But this familiar line the America, retrieving three film cas- Fair. “It was a thing of wire and wood,” must continue to be a heroine in the it was obvious Amelia was inexperienced with her new plane. and building model airplanes. —Joe Aerospace Research Pilot School, was at the pilot’s controls. Always the might have been written for Kansas- settes and inspecting the spacecraft. He she wrote. Historians say no pilots were public eye, otherwise flying opportuni- With the race out of the way, she used her Vega to set a evening of May 20, 1932. The date — the fifth anniversary of Charles Lindbergh Engle, 2001 ’’ established to train military astronauts. test pilot, the Kansan overrode the born astronaut Ronald Ellwin Evans Jr. was awed and excited when he left the flying at public events that early. ties will stop rolling in.” women’s speed record (181 miles per hour) and an altitude Lindbergh’s flight — had been chosen by her husband. (lower left), at Calling Engle “one of the sharpest onboard computers and manually flew As command module pilot on ship and began his spacewalk: record (18,415 feet). She also helped set up the Ninety- The flight set a new transatlantic record, but it could have Lambert Field, Saint When he wasn’t launching his home- pilots” he knew, Yeager selected him for the Columbia from its reentry into the Apollo 17, America’s sixth manned Nines, the world’s first organization for women pilots. The ended tragically. As she flew at 12,000 feet, the altimeter Louis, Missouri. The made model planes out of upstairs win- the x-15 program in 1963. atmosphere at Mach 25 to a successful flight to the moon, Captain Evans set a Hot-diggety-dog! — Ron Evans, It wasn’t until the morning of June 17 that Amelia felt it other ninety-eight members elected her as its first president. suddenly failed. Then she ran into a violent thunderstorm. Lone Eagle’s record- dows, Joe enjoyed flights of fancy. Years In three years, Engle made sixteen landing at Edwards Air Force Base in not-in-Kansas-anymore world record ‘‘beginning his Apollo 17’’ spacewalk, 1972 was safe to fly. As the mechanic readied the seaplane, she Ice covered the Vega and it dropped rapidly through the setting transatlantic later, he recalled the thrilling dives, flights in the rocket-powered hyper- California. He performed twenty-nine by traveling about 245,400 miles away poured strong coffee into the pilot, who had been drinking Alone over the Atlantic • In 1931, after he had proposed clouds. With no way to measure her altitude, Amelia barely solo flight was twists, and loops he made in imaginary sonic plane. Ten flights reached speeds flight test maneuvers on the way down, from his native state. Evans was born in Saint Frances the night before. On their first attempt, the plane was unable to her six times, Earhart married Putnam, who had published kept from splashing into the sea. Next, a weld on the exhaust commemorated on dogfights as he gazed up at the high five times the speed of sound; his fastest saying that he felt nasa needed more During that mission in December where his father managed a grain eleva- to reach takeoff speed. It was too heavy. Earhart ordered the her book and was still acting as her publicist. A year later manifold broke. Flames shot from the crack and the plane U.S. postage stamps ceiling of the Chapman Methodist flight hit a top speed of Mach 5.7 — or information on the shuttle’s flight capa- 1972, Evans also set a record for time tor. The family later moved to Topeka men to dump extra gasoline to save weight. As they did, they she told him she wanted to fly across the Atlantic a second began vibrating badly. And, in the last two hours of the trip, a (clockwise from church during sermons. 3,886 miles per hour. And, when he bilities before further missions. spent in lunar orbit — 147 hours, 48 where Ron graduated from Highland Publicity photo of eliminated London as a destination — it was too far to reach time — by herself. After careful planning and delays due to fuel gauge leak dripped gasoline down her neck and filled the bottom left) in 1927, And Engle’s daydreams came true. took his x-15 to an altitude of 280,600 On his second space flight in August minutes in the command module Park High School (1951). He earned Amelia Earhart (right) on the remaining 700 gallons of fuel. They decided to head bad weather, Earhart took off from Newfoundland on the cockpit with sickening fumes. At the first sight of land, a ► 1977, and 1998. After graduating from Dickinson feet (just over fifty miles), Engle 1985, Engle commanded the shuttle America. For most of that period, he was a bs in electrical engineering at the before her final flight. for Ireland instead. Joe Engle flew County Community High School in became one of only a handful of pilots Discovery. This twentieth mission in alone while his two fellow astronauts University of Kansas (1956) and an They climbed to 3,000 feet and hit fog. Going higher, they sixteen test flights in 1951, he studied aeronautical engi- to qualify for a military astronaut’s the program carried and successfully landed the Challenger lunar module and ms in aeronautical engineering from ran into snow.