President Jimmy Carter (October 1, 1924 – December 29, 2024) had a long and healthy relationship with NASA; interesting they both share their birthdays - Oct 1.
One of the lesser known facts is that Carter saved the Space Shuttle program. Under a lot of budget pressures, he increased NASA’s budget and funding for development and completion of the Space Shuttle, even though he was not supportive of space exploration by humans. www.nbcnews.com/…
Here is a pic from Oct 1, 1978, when the Carter family visited NASA at the Kennedy Space Center. At a special ceremony held in the Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA Kennedy, President Jimmy Carter awarded Congressional Space Medals to Neil Armstrong and five other astronauts.
Carter’s wrote this eloquent statement addressed to a civilization a billion years in the future. The words are still flying etched on the Golden record aboard the twin Voyager spacecraft, over 20 billion km away.
Now let’s be inspired by the legacy of Jimmy Carter and solve today’s puzzle composed in 1924 (!) by noted Belgian-born American chess player George Koltanowski (1903 - 2000). Possessed of an incredibly powerful memory, Koltanowski set the world's blindfold record on 20 September 1937, in Edinburgh, by playing 34 chess games simultaneously while blindfolded. Over 52 years, he published an estimated 19,000 chess columns for the San Francisco Chronicle.
Wishing everyone here a Happy, Healthy and Productive New Year.