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Alexis Madrigal

Alexis Madrigal - Alexis Madrigal is a senior editor at The Atlantic. He's the author of Powering the Dream: The History and Promise of Green Technology.
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The New York Observer calls him, "for all intents and purposes, the perfect modern reporter." Madrigal co-founded Longshot magazine, a high-speed media experiment that garnered attention from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and the BBC. While at Wired.com, he built Wired Science into one of the most popular blogs in the world. The site was nominated for best magazine blog by the MPA and best science Web site in the 2009 Webby Awards. He also co-founded Haiti ReWired, a groundbreaking community dedicated to the discussion of technology, infrastructure, and the future of Haiti.

He's spoken at Stanford, CalTech, Berkeley, SXSW, E3, and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and his writing was anthologized in Best Technology Writing 2010 (Yale University Press).

Madrigal is a visiting scholar at the University of California at Berkeley's Office for the History of Science and Technology. Born in Mexico City, he grew up in the exurbs north of Portland, Oregon, and now lives in Oakland.

An Apollo Astronaut Posing With a Snoopy Doll

By Alexis Madrigal
Jan 5 2012, 1:41 PM ET Comment

snoops_615.jpg

I am assuming, I'm sure incorrectly, that you will appreciate this photograph of Apollo 10 astronaut Thomas Stafford posing with a Snoopy doll.* Yes, that is Snoopy from Peanuts. I found this picture stashed away on NASAimages.org while looking for something else, and I love it. Look at the way he's holding the doll and gazing meaningfully at its snout.

The explanation for its existence, insofar as there is one, is that during Apollo 10's orbit of the moon, the Lunar Module was called "Snoopy." The character, then, became a kind of mascot for the mission, which was a practice run for Apollo 11's actual moon landing.

And here is Stafford looking considerably more hardcore after the completion of the Gemini 9 mission.

stafford_615.jpg

* I highly recommend searching the NASA archive with fairly general terms. Whatever you came looking for, you will find something else of interest. Like, say, a photo of an astronaut posing with a doll from a cartoon strip.


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