Bruce McCandless II (1937 – 2017)

Bruce McCandless II is best remembered as the first person to fly untethered in space.  However I’ll always think of him as CAPCON during the historic Apollo 11 moonwalk.  He was the guy Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin referred to as “Houston” as they walked on the surface of the moon. 

The son of a Medal of Honor recipient McCandless had deep ties to the Silicon Valley having lived in Palo Alto where he earned a master of science degree in electrical engineering from Stanford University.  That was in 1965, long before anyone had thought to call this area the Silicon Valley.

Of the iconic photograph on the right he felt that its best quality was its anonymity saying,  “I have the sun visor down, so you can’t see my face, and that means it could be anybody in there. It’s sort of a representation not of Bruce McCandless, but mankind.”  Out of respect for a true space pioneer I’ve included a photo of the man behind the mask.