Actor Tom Hanks writes,

“I was captured by the spirit of the Apollo program when I was twelve years old. I had been following the space program throughout the Mercury and Gemini flights, building model kits and watching the launches from my mom’s house in northern California.”We had an above ground pool in the backyard, and I would put a brick in the back of my swim trunks to hold me down on the bottom, suck in air through a garden hose, and lay there with my arms and legs adrift, pretending I was walking in space.”

Hanks returned to that adventure in 1994 for the filming of Apollo 13, in which he portrayed lunar astronaut Jim Lovell in an adaptation of the book “A MAN ON THE MOON - THE VOYAGES OF THE APOLLO ASTRONAUTS”, the definitive story of our nation’s lunar conquest, written by Andrew Chaikin.

     Chaikin joins me tonight (8/9) for “A Conversation with Andrea and…” on Blog Talk Radio at 9 p.m. ET to discuss the book, his access to the lunar astronauts, and his involvement in the HBO miniseries “From the Earth to the Moon”, based in part on his book. Join us in the Live Chat Room.

In the same week Space Shuttle Endeavour leapt from its launch pad — and within a month of the first lunar mission anniversary that began here on the Space Coast, a chat with Chaikin about a man on the moon seems perfectly natural. Liftoff begins here: