Why do I waste my time on details or "you are too focused on things that don't matter to anyone".

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My website, www.apollosaturn.com, is in it's twenty-first year and continues to serve a small cadre of details obsessed modelers, the vast majority of whom I have never met in person.  Not all are modelers, some are just interested in all things Saturn V.  When I started this journey in early 1997, I had no idea it would still be around today.  

The nagging details of the Saturn V still captivate me after all this time.  In the old days, when the internet was like the wild west, we discussed such things in groups like sci.space. history on Usenet.  What's that you ask? Google it, youngster.  The online resources for such things were few and far between, the first Saturn V related website I found was Chuck Corway's "Saturn V Launch Vehicle Homepage", now living in the Internet Archive.

I soon realized that the only way to find the detail information I craved was to go to the source: The Historical Archives at the Kennedy Space Center Library.  This I did five or six times, throwing a visit to Pad A and the OPFs for good measure.  I eventually tracked down most of the obvious details and as the internet grew in complexity and participation, there was a group of us who worried over the font used here and which camera targets were on which mission.

Me underneath Discovery.

The internet is a fantastic place, scary, but fantastic.  Facebook, for all it's ills, has become a magnet for high quality groups focusing on various segments of space flight history, past, present and future.  The ones geared towards the past have surpassed what I was able to gather in regards to photos and documents and so my website focuses now on images of the details of remaining equipment.  I guess you could say we have crowd sourced the history of Apollo and it's turning out really good.

From time to time I post questions in the applicable groups about details I have yet to work out.  These are admittedly very specific and most have no idea what I am pointing out in some blurry video capture image or blown up old photo.  This stuff is what keeps me interested.  I always get a few guesses, some very good and probably close to the answer.  But I crave photographic evidence of things.  If I only had a time machine....

Recent photo of mystery item.

The number one most wanted item for me currently is the horizontal stripe under the Position Numbers on the Saturn V S-IC first stage.  It's barely visible and never in focus in photos from the Apollo era.  I have tried for years to figure this one out with no success.  So now I ask periodically in Facebook groups, providing an old photo and a recent photo. 

Just the other day I posted another plea and got good guess and offers of help, but I got something else too, "...you are too obsessed with a detail uninteresting to the universe at large."  Wow, suddenly history is not interesting?  Have I gone over the edge in my search for the tiniest details?

If this particular person is a "millennial" I can understand it.  The majority of this age group really either hates history or completely ignores it at their own peril.

I have decided to take the comment as sarcasm, even though it may not be.

I have been at this detail search longer than the Enterprise's five year mission and I will continue.  Without historians digging out the dusty cobwebs of history, we can not come to conclusions about the past.  History teaches us new things everyday and gives us insight into events past and future.  Don't abandon it kids, or the future might smack you in the face with the past.

John Duncan