Istvaan Shogaatsu ended up in my WoW guild. Never quite realized the magnitude of what he did in Eve (though to be frank, I never bothered to care at the time). What a badass! Thanks for the nice read, OP.
Amazing.
My grandpa was one of the leading architects for some of this work (mostly lunar probes out of all the ones listed there). It is pretty spectacular to see what people managed to achieve back in those times. Wish I got to meet him. Thanks for posting this.