Space Pioneers and Visionaries, RIP

The past couple of days have brought reports of three pioneers in advancing the frontier in space who have passed away.

Tom Rogers was an older gentleman, a curmudgeon in the positive sense of the word, who persistently advocated for greater human access to space, including space tourism, for decades with often innovative approaches. I enjoyed meeting and talking with Tom at a number of space conferences over the years, though I'd not seen him in the last few years.

Konrad Dannenberg, a leading member of Wernher von Braun's team of rocket scientists who developed the Saturn rockets that propelled the first humans to the Moon, passed away at age 96.

Finally, Charles Gehrke was a leading lunar scientist who studied the lunar rock and soil samples who returned by the Apollo astronauts. He was chartered by NASA to identify if any life forms existed in the samples (They don't).