Journal Contributor Ricardo Salamé writes:
I was born in 1968 in Caracas, Venezuela. Ever since I was a child, I was fascinated with Aviation, Science Fiction and Spaceflight. Unfortunately I didn't live the Apollo years: I was to small. When I was growing up, I never miss an episode of Star Trek or the Black Sheep Squadron. I always had, as a toy, an airplane or spaceship. One of my earliest memories is of my dad telling me that the guy that was going to ride the rocket was one of his schoolmates, Charles Duke.
In 1975, my parents and I visited the Johnson Space Center. This was a blastoff for me. When I became 12 years old, my dad though that I was old enough to have a copy of the Apollo 11 issue of Life magazine the he saved for me in 1969. Soon, I started to get curious and wanted to know more of the Apollo missions. I began to read all that I could find of Apollo Program. This lead me with frequently visits to the USA embassy, asking for information of the Space Program. With time, a question started to pull on my mind: Why did we stop after Apollo 17? By the next year, the Enterprise test flights began and I fell in love with the Space Shuttle. In April of 1981, I watched the first mission of the Space Shuttle Columbia on TV and, in one of those strange coincidences of life, the commander of the first Space Shuttle Mission was John Young, the Commander of Apollo 16. He became my hero. He was the only one of the 12 that walked on the moon that stayed in the program.
When I was in college, I became involved in a local Astronomy club, which got me involved in the Humboldt Planetarium, where I organized speeches and astronomy courses and wrote articles in the local paper. In 1990, the Director of the Planetarium offered me a position as instructor. I worked there from 1990 to 1995, teaching the night courses of Introduction to Astronomy, Space Exploration, Star Orientation, and Star Identification. I also had the opportunity to conduct the weekend shows monthly.
In 1995, a local radio station gave me the opportunity to do a 30-minute Astronomy talk show, and 'Contacto con el Universo' was born. This aired once a week. It gave me the opportunity to make more than 250 shows about different aspect of Astronomy, Space Exploration, Spaceflight, Aviation, Science Fiction and Science in general. In order to make this happen, I had to give up the planetarium activities. Unfortunately, the last program was on air in December 1999. For me, the highlight of the program was a live interview in the studio with NASA astronaut candidate Dr. Garrett E. Reisman. That is me with Dr. Reisman in the picture.
Besides astronomy, I make Scale Models. I consider this activity very interesting and stimulating, where each individual can express different concepts in a diversity of environments. As usual, old loves are present here, too. I prefer to do Real Space Models, making great emphasis in the Apollo Era and, also, research and experimental aircraft. I am also very attracted to the strange and bizarre concepts of flying machines. I also do a little Sci Fi, such as Star Wars and Star Trek. For me, the best part of modeling is the research that must be done to get the models as accurate and real as possible. I enjoy digging for information, and reading about the machines. Some times, this process leads me to incredible information about different subjects.
I belong to a local club called Modelismo 2000. We have a website. Several of my works are in the Galeria area. We have traveled to different countries to participate in various contests, including several USA regional contests and one USA national event.
Right now, I work in a Project Management division of a software company. I am in Marketing and Sales. We work on various projects related to IT, Civil Construction and Oil business. We work with several products of Project Management, Risk Analysis and Contract Controls and we provide consulting services for the products that we represent.
This October I will start a new part of may life, I will marry Anakaryna Palacios. She and I share wonderful years and hope we will spend the rest of our life together. I think that in a couple of years, we will start our own family. Maybe one of our kids will wonder, too: why did we stop after the Apollo 17? And decide to take a more active roll in the Space Program.