posted 03-18-2016 10:13 AM               

No one at the I.G. Brown Training and Education Center knew of NASA astronaut Lt. Col. John M. Lounge, a member of the Texas Air National Guard. That's what made it so awkward recently, when I uncovered an amazing piece of history from this man, who flew on three space shuttle missions.

I recently discovered a TEC unit patch - now framed with a certificate of authentication signed by Lounge - that went into space for five days in 1988, aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery.

On a related note, I saw when Paul Richards in 2013 made a presentation of a flown STS-102 patch, which was more than a dozen years earlier - so who keeps track of this stuff?

"No one at the I.G. Brown Training and Education Center knew of NASA astronaut Lt. Col. John M. Lounge, a member of the Texas Air National Guard. That's what made it so awkward recently, when I uncovered an amazing piece of history from this man, who flew on three space shuttle missions.

"It is, on one hand, an amazing achievement that the TEC captivated this great American's interest and that he thought enough of us to go to the trouble of carrying our unit patch into space. On the other hand, it is one of the more unfortunate examples of not keeping track of our history because I found it dust covered, atop a storage shelf."

Photo credit: U.S. Air National Guard/Master Sgt. Mike R. Smith