Alan Marlow

Alan Marlow considers himself to be a “Child of the Space Age”. By the time Yuri Gagarin orbited the Earth he was well and truly “infected” with the “space bug” an affliction which has remained with me to this day. One of my earliest memories was of being on my fathers farm and hearing rocket engines being tested ten miles away at the rocket propulsion establishment at Westcott. From that time he was determined that he would see a rocket launched, an ambition which he fulfilled in 1995 when I watched Space Shuttle Atlantis lift off for the first ever docking with the Mir space station. After a variety of jobs which included working as an assistant for the meteorological office, driving a truck, and working as a photographer on a cruise ship, he became a technical operator for the BBC, a job which included location sound and camera work, and studio based audio recording and editing. Currently he works for the Open University (a distance learning organization) creating Cdroms for disabled students.Mr. Marlow joined the British Interplanetary Society in the 1980s but other than attending lectures and seminars didn’t really contribute to the societies activities. A couple of years ago he began the process of creating an audio history of the society, interviewing society members about their recollections of the society with the object of eventually compiling them into an audio CD. As seems to be the case with all part time undertakings of this sort it’s turned into a somewhat protracted project, (it may well get finished just before the first human expedition to Mars!!). In addition, in 2005 he created a successful promotional video for the society to use in support of their bid to host the 2008 International Astronautical Congress in Glasgow, Scotland.