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Ventura County Man Tells Stories About America's Space Program As Researcher For Smithsonian

America’s efforts to explore space over the last six decades captured the nation’s imagination. It’s history which is still being written.

A Ventura County man is helping to write it, as a historian with the Smithsonian Institution.

Michael McGorn of Simi Valley has spent most of his life as a military, and government historian, working for the Air Force, the Environmental Protection Agency, and now the Smithsonian.  McGorn has authored, or co-authored nine books. He says he loves trying to tell America’s space story, in part because much of it has never been told before.

Telling those stories means McGorn gets to talked to some of the big names in front of and behind the scenes in the space program. As a historian, it also means looking through mountains of information about the space program which have never been made public.

McGorn says he loves getting the chance to tell stories about space exploration, noting it’s one of the subjects which has widespread appeal.

McGorn says while he loves writing about space, he says the research is grueling. He says he enjoys the challenge of often taking complex pieces of the space exploration story and condensing it down into ways which can be accurate, yet also compelling.

Lance Orozco has been News Director of KCLU since 2001, providing award-winning coverage of some of the biggest news events in the region, including the Thomas and Woolsey brush fires, the deadly Montecito debris flow, the Borderline Bar and Grill attack, and Ronald Reagan's funeral.