RARE "NASA Whistleblower" Ken Johnston Signed MARTIAN DOLLAR For Sale
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RARE "NASA Whistleblower" Ken Johnston Signed MARTIAN DOLLAR:
$499.99
Up for sale a VERY RARE! "NASA Whistleblower" Ken Johnston Hand Signed Martian Dollar.
ES-7350E
Ralph
Kennedy Johnston (now
using the forename Ken) is a retired aerospace worker, ex-US Marine
cadet and so-called "NASA Whistleblower." His principal claim to fame within the
NASA-hating community is that he refused to follow orders and destroy an
extensive collection of 8×10" glossy photoprints from the Apollo program. Johnston
was born in Corpus Christi, Texas on 2 October 1942, and studied at Oklahoma City University. He
enlisted in the US Marines in August 1962 and reported to Pensacola, Florida as a Marine cadet for flight training in
September 1964. He left the Marines in August 1966. As a qualified avionics
technician, Johnston was hired by Grumman Aircraft, principal contractor for
the Apollo Lunar Module, to assist with cockpit and instrument development and
training, in Houston. He has described his status at that time as a
"civilian astronaut consultant pilot." From 1969 to 1972, during the
Apollo Program, he was employed by Brown & Root, principal contractors to
NASA for management of the Lunar Receiving Laboratory, where all the moon rocks
were stored, curated, catalogued and in some cases distributed to scientists
who had successfully applied to carry out analysis in their own labs. An
important part of Johnston's duty was to package and ship lunar samples to
science labs, together with photographs documenting their exact location and
orientation in situ. As such, he had in his office several sets of
photographs taken by Apollo astronauts with their chest-mounted Hasselblad
cameras. When the moonrock distribution wound down, he was instructed by Bud
Laskawa, his boss, to destroy what remained of the photo archive, but he kept
one set as a personal collection. Johnston applied to NASA for the 1977 astronaut
selection for duty as a Space Shuttle astronaut, but was turned down on the
basis of inadequate academic qualifications. The ideal astronaut was no longer
a jet-jock, but a highly educated person with useful skills. Accordingly,
Johnston obtained a Ph.D. in metaphysics from the Reform Baptist Theological Seminary
in Denver, Colorado, and began using the title
"Dr. Johnston". However, by the time NASA was recruiting again,
Johnston says he was considered too old. He did, however, join NASA's
educational outreach program as a "Solar System Ambassador" — a
purely voluntary appointment. In 1980 Johnston was hired by Martin Marietta and
sent to Vandenburg AFB in California to be part of a team adapting that launch
site for launching the Space Shuttle. As a result of the Challenger disaster in
January 1986, the Vandenburg plan was scrapped and Johnston laid off with the
rest of that team. His last job in aerospace was with Boeing in Seattle, where
he was designated as a human factors engineer. Johnston
styles himself "Lieutenant Colonel USAF/CAP" for certain public
occasions. The rank is an honorary title within the Civil
Air Patrol —Johnston has never been an officer of the US
Air Force. In mid-2013, Johnston was one of the 2,761 applicants for the
one-way-only trip to Mars, offered by the now defunct Mars One
scam. He was short-listed as one of on 30 December 2013, but failed to make the 100 cut in February
2015.
In early 1995, Johnston attended a
lecture in Seattle by the pseudoscientist Richard Hoagland. After the lecture, he introduced himself and
asked if Hoagland would be interested in his Apollo photograph collection,
which he described as "unique." Indeed Hoagland was, and they went
through the collection together the next day. Hoagland later wrote (of himself,
in the third person):
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