133: Wonders All Around with Bruce McCandless III

That famous photo- the one we're all familiar with- an astronaut in a bright white suit flying untethered – floating, really, above the Earth with the dark contrast of space in the background… that photo has an incredible backstory… and it's been captured perfectly in an awesome new book by author Bruce McCandless III.

Astronaut Bruce McCandless III is perhaps best remembered as the subject of a famous NASA photograph (below right), flying alongside the space shuttle in the Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU) -- the first astronaut to fly untethered from his spacecraft…

His time as an astronaut encompassed much more than that mission, including serving as the Mission Control communicator for Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin's moonwalk on the Apollo 11 mission. There's so much more to this iconic photo- and now we can enjoy the story behind the moment from Bruce's son, Bruce McCandless III in his new book, Wonders All Around. On this episode, Bruce shares his perspective with Beth on what it was like growing up with an astronaut Dad and more right here on this week's Casual Space Podcast. Both the book -and this conversation- is really good.

About Bruce McCandless III

Bruce McCandless III grew up in the shadow of Houston's Johnson Space Center during the Apollo and Skylab eras, watching Batman and Buzz Aldrin with equal enthusiasm. He graduated from the Plan II Honors Program of the University of Texas and went on to earn an M.A. from the University of Reading in England and a J.D. from the University of Texas School of Law. After teaching at Saint David's School in New York City, he returned to Austin to practice law and retired in 2019 as general counsel of Superior HealthPlan, the Texas affiliate of Fortune 100 company Centene.

In addition to Wonders All Around: The Incredible True Story of Astronaut Bruce McCandless II and The First Untethered Flight in Space, Bruce is also the author of the science fiction novel Sour Lake (2011), the modern fairy tale Beatrice and the Basilisk (2014), and, with his daughter Carson, a book of light verse for middle schoolers titled Carson Clare's Trail Guide to Avoiding Death (And Other Unpleasant Consequences) (2017). He has published poems, stories, and essays in a variety of journals, including the Texas Observer, The Seattle Review, The Asian Wall Street Journal, Pleiades, and Consequence, and his book of poems, All of This is Ours, will be published in the summer of 2021 by Kelsay Books. Bruce is an avid runner and mountain biker who spends most of his free time on Central Texas trails. He is also a board member of the Worthy Garden Club—an Oregon-based environmental organization working to plant a million trees in the Pacific Northwest—and the Austin Library Foundation. Bruce and his wife, Pati McCandless, live in Austin

To Learn More about Bruce and his work:

First, check out the famous photo here: Bruce McCandless III from the NASA website: https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/astronaut-bruce-mccandless-on-first-ever-untethered-spacewalk

And

Bruce III, the author, the attorney, the teacher and more: https://brucemccandless.com.

ORDER YOUR COPY OF THIS GREAT BOOK Wonders All Around HERE: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1626348650/ref=cm_sw_su_dp