1. Jay Barbree was an American correspondent for NBC News, focusing on space travel.
22 Facts About Jay Barbree
1. 2.
Jay Barbree was the only journalist to have covered every non-commercial human space mission in the United States, beginning with the first American in space, Alan Shepard aboard Freedom 7 in 1961, continuing through to the last mission of the Space Shuttle, Atlantis's STS-135 mission in July 2011.
3.
Jay Barbree was present for all 135 Space Shuttle launches, and every crewed launch for the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo eras.
4.
Jay Barbree was so interested in the space program that he paid for his ticket to get to Cape Canaveral in Florida in 1957 to watch the attempted Vanguard TV-3 launch.
5.
Six months later, Jay Barbree joined NBC as a part-time space program reporter, eventually moving to full-time.
6.
Jay Barbree described his relationship with the astronauts as a friend and confidant, often going out to dinner with them or socializing when they were in town.
7.
Jay Barbree noted that if he were to report this, it would jeopardize the friendships and possibly his career, so he said nothing.
8.
Jay Barbree was one of forty finalists to be selected as a Journalist in Space.
9.
Consequently, Jay Barbree was the first journalist to report on the source of the destruction of the Space Shuttle Challenger: faulty O-rings.
10.
Jay Barbree was part of the NBC News Space Unit that won an Emmy award for NBC's coverage of the Apollo 11 Moon landing.
11.
In 2011, Barbree was honored by the Space Foundation as a recipient of the Douglas S Morrow Public Outreach Award in recognition of the role he played in shaping the way the nation views and understands space.
12.
Jay Barbree was one of the longest-serving network correspondents to work continuously on a single subject.
13.
Jay Barbree started working for NBC on July 21,1958, covering the space program and remained on that beat until his retirement in 2017.
14.
In 2018, Jay Barbree received NASA's Chroniclers Award with his name added to The Chroniclers wall at the Kennedy Space Center Press Site.
15.
Jay Barbree was the author or coauthor of eight books, including two memoirs.
16.
In 1993, Shepard, fellow Mercury astronaut Deke Slayton, journalist Howard Benedict, and Jay Barbree collaborated to write the book Moon Shot: The Inside Story of America's Race to the Moon.
17.
Jay Barbree said he wrote the book because as he looked back over his career when recalling all the people he had worked with, very few were left.
18.
Jay Barbree said that he stayed away from sensationalizing the space program, or those associated with it.
19.
Jay Barbree commented that he would not put some items that could be considered harmful into his newest book, stating, "The whole idea of the book is not to hurt somebody".
20.
Jay Barbree told the investigator he would speak to his superiors, but then erased the tape.
21.
Jay Barbree wrote the novelization of "Pilot Error", an episode of The Six Million Dollar Man, a television series based upon Caidin's novel Cyborg.
22.
Jay Barbree married Jo Reisinger, whom he met while covering her participation in Florida beauty pageants, in 1960.