Jack King, a NASA public affairs official who became the voice of the Apollo moon shots, has died. He was 84.
King counted down the historic launch of Apollo 11 on July 16, 1969. He also did the countdown for hundreds of the early rocket launches, including the two-man Gemini missions and many other Apollo missions
King died on Thursday at a hospice facility, not far from Kennedy Space Center, after being diagnosed early this year with heart failure.
In 2009, on the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, King said that he still enjoyed hearing recordings of himself from that big launch day.
King headed NASA's public information office at Cape Canaveral during the Mercury program, the job he still held when astronauts first flew to the moon.
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"Twelve, 11, 10, 9, ignition sequence start. Six, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, zero, all engine running. Liftoff! We have a liftoff, 32 minutes past the hour. Liftoff on Apollo 11."
King later said he was so excited, he said "engine" instead of "engines." He had no script and stuck to the bare facts, he said in 2009.
King left for NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston following Apollo 11 and was a member of the three-man team that negotiated an information plan for the joint US-Soviet Apollo-Soyuz flight in 1975. It resulted in the first live TV coverage of a Soviet rocket launch, Harris said.
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