Background
Hoagland's self-reported curriculum vitae includes positions as Curator of Astronomy and Space Science at the Springfield Science Museum, 1964–1967, and Assistant Director at the Gengras Science Center in West Hartford, Connecticut, 1967–1968. He was a Science Advisor to CBS News during the Apollo program, 1968–1971. In July 1968, Hoagland filed a copyright registration for a planetarium presentation and show script called The Grand Tour. In 1969, he was contracted by the Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation to write a chapter about the Moon for a press book. The Grumman publication was intended to educate members of the media and government officials concerning the Apollo Lunar Module.
A popular planetarium lecturer at the Springfield Science Museum, Hoagland produced a program called "Mars: Infinity to 1965" to coincide with the Mariners 3 and 4 missions. Charles Renaud produced a radio program for WTIC (AM) in Hartford, Connecticut, The Night of the Encounter, which covered the 14 July 1965 Mariner 4 flyby of the planet Mars. Hoagland was interviewed for the program at the Springfield Science Museum by WTIC announcer Dick Bertel.
In 1976, Hoagland, an avid Star Trek fan, initiated a letter-writing campaign that successfully persuaded President Gerald Ford to name the first Space Shuttle the Enterprise, replacing the previously-slated name for the prototype vehicle, Constitution. The Enterprise was rolled out for public display on 17 September 1976, Constitution Day.
Hoagland authored the book The Monuments of Mars: A City on the Edge of Forever, and co-authored the book Dark Mission: The Secret History of NASA, which was ranked 21st on 18 November 2007 on The New York Times Best Seller list for paperback nonfiction.
Hoagland runs The Enterprise Mission website, which he describes as "an independent NASA watchdog and research group, the Enterprise Mission, attempting to figure out how much of what NASA has found in the solar system over the past 50 years has actually been silently filed out of sight as classified material, and therefore totally unknown to the American people."
Hoagland appears regularly as the "Science Advisor" for Coast to Coast AM, a late-night radio talk show.
Read more about this topic: Richard C. Hoagland
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