SKIRMISHER

Positive Ape Index blogger reports on an uber-lucky dude who one day walks into an antique mall in Kansas and runs out with a genuine piece of American history: a space suit used in the Gemini program, circa 1963.

I should stop speaking right now; I’m choking with the overwhelming desire to eat my hat, so here’s just a chunk of text singing the particularly lucky craphound’s praises:

This is a space suit from the Gemini program, the second stage of NASA’s mission to conquer space. How it ended up in a Kansas junk store is another story, one that our hero pieced together afterwards. It is most definitely the real deal, a suit that never went into space, but was used for high-altitude pressure tests during the Gemini program. There were around thirty of these suits made, and this is the only one that wasn’t destroyed or put in a museum somewhere.

One thing that struck me was the total insanity that this artifact represents. When they decided to go into space, there were no guidebooks, no instructions, no Google. All they had were a handful of captured German scientists, good old American bullheaded optimism, and a tiny Sputnik circling above us, laughing. You couldn’t go down to the spacesuit store and order up a 44 Large. You had to make it from scratch, just like the rockets and capsules and computers and EVERYTHING ELSE. Everything.

LINK via BOINGBOING

Stumble it!