We are really lucky, we have some interesting history that goes beyond just being on the culture of the area, within the museum and Learning Center we are talking about the stratosphere flights and in sending a man up above the stratosphere, essentially rapid city area is the home of the first spaceflight, so what the National Geographic and the u. S. Army did is they decided to Work Together to make this happen and they wanted to find a natural shape to rest the balloon and the gondola and, they were looking for a bold area not only to spread it out but also that natural ball shape protects the gondola the first couple thousand feet as it goes up and so this was all over north america and they had a couple different decisions that they couldve made, places they could have chosen and essentially they chose rapid city because of how kind the people were, because of how welcoming we are, the perfect shape of the ball was nice to, but it did come down to the people of the area that was the reasoning behind choosing. The first attempt happened in 1934 and so there were three men on the first flight, it was the captain anderson, major william captioner and captain albert stevens, what happened was they got into the gondola and i went up and they had about 60,000 feet and they think that the friction between the medal and the canvas of the balloon ignited the hydrogen those inside the balloon, so the balloon failed, it busted up completely and they fell into a freefall, they started exiting the gondola, they had parachutes, first and got out just fine, the second and got stuck in the gondola, so we dont know who is first and who is second and who was third but the first and got out, he had to kick the second man out of the gondola to get him free and the major was last, he ended up getting out of the gondola at 500 feet above the ground, so the second fight happened in 1935, the National Geographic and u. S. Army air corps did change how the balloon was created, so what they did is they used helium and set of hydrogen and that allowed the balloon to not ignite, which was fabulous for the people in the gondola, two of them and came back and that was or Will Anderson and albert stephens, they did both come back for the second flight and they hit a high of 72,395 feet, they took measurements about the stratosphere and cosmic radiation and about anything they could possibly measure, they attempted to wall they were up in the gondola, they took an image of the curvature of the earth which was never done, they were recognized for their efforts, they were given medals by fdr and uses his success, and all around success, what makes it even better for rapid city is that it happened in the black hills, it was here, who was a local so it was just a Great Community involved, a great piece of history. Next on American History three women are placed on their experiences working on the apollo space program, sharing how they overcame challenges and their roles with nasa, this program was hosted by the national air and space museum law, you know we feel strongly that with the right inspiration and support one of our visitors could go on and change the world, in fact we know that the first person will have stepped through our doors first and maybe she will come back here to give a lecture of iran some day, before introducing our speakers im really excited to also let you know that we have a special guest he was able to join us at the last moment, her name is marianne