EDITORIAL: Castle was the best of Logansport

Apr. 13—The majority of Americans were sitting at home glued to their television screens on July 20, 1969 when astronaut Neil Armstrong said those iconic words, "Houston, this is Tranquility Base. The eagle has landed."

Logansport native Kent Castle was also glued to the screen, but his was a little closer to the action. Castle was sitting at the communications console in Houston, and he can be seen in several photos from that night as NASA staff celebrated the incredible accomplishment.

"Just the feeling of being there was something I'll never forget," he told the Pharos-Tribune in a 1983 interview.

Castle, who worked as a research engineer at NASA for decades beginning in 1966, died March 17 in Houston, Texas at age 85. According to his obituary, he worked on the team of several important NASA programs including Apollo, Skylab, space shuttle Columbia, Viking 1 and Viking 2 probes and the International Space Station.

He's developed and patented many of the parts that have helped make all of those program successful. He said his most important invention was a small electronic protection system which guards spaceships against lightning, and later helped protect Apollo 13 when lightning struck the rocket on takeoff. His mother, Florence, referred to him as a "troubleshooter for electrical problems" in a 1981 Pharos-Tribune article.

A 1956 graduate of Logansport High School, Castle received a degree in electrical engineering at Purdue University in 1961 and later earned his PhD from Cal Tech when he moved to California to begin a career in aviation engineering. Before NASA, he worked for Douglas Aircraft, North American Rockwell and Lockheed.

Castle's legacy will also live on through NASA's Ham Radio in Space program, which has been going strong for 41 years. A ham radio enthusiast, he and Dr. Owen Garriott, a shuttle astronaut on Columbia, persuaded NASA to allow a ham radio aboard the shuttle on a 1983 flight.

"We think it's a way to bring the space program into people's living rooms in a way that it's never done before," he told the Pharos-Tribune in 1983.

According to NASA, the program has directly connected over 100 crew members with more than 1 million student participants from 49 U.S. states, 63 countries, and every continent.

Little did Castle know at the time that his passion for space would spawn a program that continues to inspire young children to dream about space exploration. Fortunately, the dreamer from Logansport did get to see it reach its potential.