This photograph depicts Marshall Space Flight Center employees, James Reagin, machinist (top); Floyd McGinnis, machinist; and Ernest Davis, experimental test mechanic (foreground), working on a mock up of the S-IC thrust structure. The S-IC stage is the first stage, or booster, of the 364-foot long Saturn V rocket that ultimately took astronauts to the Moon. The S-IC stage, burned over 15 tons of propellant per second during its 2.5 minutes of operation to take the vehicle to a height of about 36 miles and to a speed of about 6,000 miles per hour. The stage was 138 feet long and 33 feet in diameter. Operating at maximum power, all five of the engines produced 7,500,000 pounds of thrust.

jsc2024e067099 (10/15/2024) --- Stream Middle School students Cade Sando and Mac McGinnis harvest raspberry seeds to complete additional raspberry seed growth trials to optimize and finalize their experiment, Growth of Raspberry Seeds in Microgravity. Their experiment is part of the Nanoracks-National Center for Earth and Space Science Education-Surveyor-Student Spaceflight Experiments Program Mission 18 to ISS (Nanoracks-NCESSE-Surveyor-SSEP).

Returning NASA astronaut and former Mir 22 crew member John E. Blaha (left), puts his arm around his wife, Brenda, as they prepare to depart with the STS-81 crew for Johnson Space Center Jan. 23 from the Skid Strip at Cape Canaveral Air Station. NASA’s Patrick McGinnis is on the right. The STS-81 crew arrived at KSC aboard the Space Shuttle Atlantis Jan. 22 to conclude the fifth ShuttleMir docking mission and return Blaha to Earth after four months in space