Transcripts For CSPAN3 American Artifacts Space Exploration

In the boeing milestones flight all at the center of the museum and this is the hall where we display the pioneering aircraft and spacecraft that transformed the modern world. When this Museum Opened in july 1976, almost every space artifact on display had recently been in the news. This was very much a museum of contemporary spaceflight and it was for most people, their first chance to see what had been lauded in the 1960s and early 1970s during this heroic age of space exploration, when humans first ventured off the planet into space and all the way to the moon, when the United States and the soviet union began sending craft out to explore the nearby planets. All of this was exciting, thrilling, and people just flocked into the museum to see it. In the 40 years since the building opened, we have continued to acquire treasures of space history. We have now about 17,000 artifacts related to space history. We have just over 1000 of them on display in two locations here in the washington area, and then we have another 1500 on display and other museums around the world. In the tour today, we are going to look at some of the original artifacts that were the stars of the show when the National Aerospace Museum Opened and we are also going to look at artifacts from history that have been made since then. We will start our tour right here with the lunar module. The icon for the landing on the moon in july 1969. It actually has a companion spacecraft that the apollo command module and, the command module for the Service Module in the lunar module together carried three astronauts, Neil Armstrong and buzz aldrin and Michael Collins to the moon. The command module, very significantly also brought them back safely. This and lunar module is an actual lunar module that never flew in space. Its a lunar module number two and was intended to be used in an earth orbital test flight but the test was canceled as unnecessary, so nasa transferred the lunar module to the national air and space museum. It consists of two parts, the base, which has the legs and the rocket engine in it and then, the oddly shaped top, which is the crew module or crew cabin. And, this was attached to the command module for the flight from earth to lunar orbit. Once in lunar orbit, the two crewmembers who would descend to the surface, armstrong and aldrin, climbed into the lunar module it is separated from the command module where Michael Collins stayed to orbit the moon , in it began its descent down to the surface. Fall forward, fall forward drifting to the right a little. Now back right, engine stopped, we copy it down, you go. The eagle has landed. This was a thrilling moment in history and, almost everybody who was alive at that moment remembered where they were whether they were watching on television in their own homes or if they were standing in an Appliance Store watching it on a television, people around the world stop to watch the landing on the moon and the first steps of human beings on the moon. Step off to landed now. That is once small step for man, one giant leap for mankind. After the crew, the apollo 11 crew had climbed out and done some exploration close to the lunar module, collected some samples of lunar soil and rocks, taken some photographs, placed a u. S. Flag on the moon, they went back into the lunar module and this became the vehicle for their trip home. They launched the small top portion leaving the base on the moon and they ascended back up into lunar orbit rendezvoused with the command module again and exited the lunar module and once they were secure inside of the command module they reunited with Michael Collins, the lunar module was detached and it fell back to the moon with an intentional crash on the moon because they just wanted to be able to track what kind of impact it made on the moon. So, from a space historians point of view, these two craft, the apollo command module and the lunar module are the icons of the space race along with the seats to best suits worn by astronauts on the moon these symbolize a historic moment in time, july 1969, when human beings first set foot on another body in our solar system and in effect, one the space race. When children look at this spacecraft, they often say that doesnt look like a spaceship because we tend to think that spacecraft are always streamlined and maybe they look like rockets more than anything else but, this spacecraft has an interesting design and in many ways it is fairly primitive, given the job that it has to do, it did not need to be streamlined on the outside because it was not going to operate in the atmosphere that it would only operate in the vacuum of space and it would not be subject to strong gravitational field on the moon so, its actually fairly flimsy in some areas, the legs are obviously strong, the amount for the rocket engine is stronger but the crew module or crew cabin was fairly spartan it had two windows, Neil Armstrong had command of the craft during the final dissent and landing, both of them were standing, they were fully suited in spacesuits and they pretty much filled that interior volume in that position with the spacesuits on. It was not really designed for comfort, it was designed for the purpose of landing and giving the crew an exit so they could spend a couple of hours on the surface of the moon and then, launching again along with the precious cargo of lunar soil and rocks to bring back home, to demonstrate that they had been there and to have those materials for scientists to begin analyzing to better understand the moon. Its also amazing to think that the computing tower required in that day, to send the craft to the moon and to program them for the dissent and the launch. What is done is fairly primitive computer programs and memory was minuscule compared to the memory we have now. It is often said that the Computing Power we hold in our hands every day, with our smart phones, is vastly more than it took to send people to the moon and back. This gives you a sense of the ingenuity of the engineers in that day to devise the solutions to get people to the moon and back safely. So, we have seen the iconic artifacts from the heroic age of spaceflight in the 1960s. Just feet away from it is the much more contemporary spacecraft, spaceship one. The first craft that was privately developed, not by nasa , not by the u. S. Government, but, by a company headed by an ingenious aircraft designer, spaceship one was the first privately developed craft ever to be launched into space, return to earth, be launched again and return to earth with a human on board. By doing that in 2004, spaceship one won a prize of 10 million that was posted to encourage commercial development of spacecraft that could be used for space tourism. Spaceship one operates as a suborbital craft and doesnt going to orbit around the earth but it goes up makes a loop into space and then glides back down to a landing but there is a mothership that theres transporter aircraft, the mothership flies around in the atmosphere and then it is released from that and, after its released is when the rocket engine ignites and shoots straight up. Spaceship one is a very innovative design in that it has a hybrid rocket thats part liquid propellant and part solid propellant. It can hold three people in prizewinning flights, it had only the pilot and some ballast to indicate the weight of two other people. And it has a very distinctive design. Its in a configuration with wings up at about 40 to 50,000 feet but the wings are down, its very streamlined looking but as it shoots up into orbit and we took the threshold but that stabilizes the craft for that loop over and orbit. The loop lasts about six minutes during which the pilot and any passengers would be able to experience weightlessness, if they wanted to unbuckle their seatbelts they would rise out of their seats and they can look through all the round windows and get a wonderful view of the curvature of the earth and the blackness of space. Then, as the craft begins to this end, the feathered wings stabilize the spacecraft and this is to stabilize the way a badminton birdie or shuttlecock is stabilized so that the nose stays downward pointing in the whole craft stays stable. It also creates more dragon slows the spacecraft down more quick so it doesnt need a bulky heatshield. So then, spaceship one comes back into the atmosphere and once its in the part of the atmosphere where there is enough air that it can fly aerodynamically again, the wings pivoted back down into the streamlined position and, the whole thing glides back down to a landing on the desert or on the runway. At this little starspangled craft that to me is reminiscent of a race car, it is sleek, it looks aerodynamic, it looks bd ends 40 and it just looks like the kind of craft that a person who wanted to go up into space for a quick look and a quick experience of weightlessness might want to climb in and go for a ride. Most of the space class the rest spacecraft in this museum come from our space agency. Nasa is a principal donor and at the end of nasas needs of the agency will transfer spacecraft and a variety of other equipment, so they can be preserved and displayed. Spaceship one is a different case in that it came from private enterprise and in this case we work directly with the owner of the designer and his business partner, paul allen and the cofounder of microsoft. We approach them after the first flight in june 2004, regardless of whether you win the prize or not, we think spaceshipone deserves to be in the National Collection because it was the first privately developed spacecraft, piloted by human beings to go into space and return. You might notice theres a small dent in the nozzle of the engine of spaceshipone and thats not damage caused by delivering it to the museum or suspending it from the rafters but rather, that buckled in space, during its first test flight when the engine ignited and just the heat and the force of the engine ignition buckled the nozzle for the second flight and the third flight a different nozzle was used and they also made some corrections to the ignition sequence, so they didnt have the buckling problem again. But, when we asked to have spaceshipone delivered to us for the National Collection, we asked to have it returned to the original configuration from the first flight. The first flight wasnt the prizewinning flight but it was the recordbreaking flight. So, they went to the trouble to reinstall the dented engine nozzle onto it. The next stop will be skylab and we will look at that because its the original artifact on display here since before the Museum Opened. Skylab is so large that it was brought into the museum before the building was closed out. Now, im standing in front of a model of skylab as tall as i am but the real skylab orbital workstation behind me, absolutely dwarfed the model in me, it reaches from the floor into the skylight of the building cost two stories tall. Skylab was the United States first space station placed in orbit in 1973 and in 1973 and 1974, three different nasa astronaut crews spent time porting it three men at a time, one group was there for one month and another group for two months and the third group for three months. And, the whole point of the Skylab Mission was to get some experience living and working in space when the Apollo Program came to an end, there was still hardware left over and nasa thought what could we do with this. We have developed a tremendous capability to launch a spacecraft all the way to the moon that we still have a couple powerful rockets on hand, can we repurpose them and do Something Else . So the decision reached was to take the third state of the gigantic rocket that powered the spacecraft on a trajectory to the moon and turn that into a habitable module, sort of miniature space station that crews can live in while they were getting this experience after living and working in space. The actual element behind me is the full cylinder marked by a wide white band that you can see that its two stories on the inside and these are two floors where the astronauts could actually live but they have been in spacecraft that were essentially caulk bits, they had no more room in them than a sports car but, skylab was like having a house and it actually had rules in it. There was a galley ward room where they could prepare food, meet around a table, eat together, they were still eating out of plastic bags and at least it was more homelike and more sociable. They had sleeping quarters, three little bunk areas about the size of closets but each member had a private area to retire for solitary time and sleep without being confined to the flight see and a capsule and most important had an actual bathroom. It had an actual toilet and all these previous submissions, the littleknown dirty secret is that the astronauts were using plastic bags to collect their waste but finally they had a toilet and they didnt have to deal with the mass of taking care of the bodily functions. It had a sink where they could wash up and shave and it even had a shower which was, essentially a tunnel like shes that an astronaut pulled up around him and they could use water from a sprayer. It was more trouble than it was worth, they would just take sponge baths but there was room for them to have an exercise bicycle and to have experiments set up in a huge attic above the living area where the extra supplies were stored and the systems elements were there. But, it was so big he could read track and do tumbling around the perimeter of it just running in tumbling across the tops of the lockers it was for fun but they use that space for serious reasons to and they were testing out a jet backpack that might be used and were able to operate that in the attic space that was so commodious. Then, below the living deck floor, there was the remainder of one of the propellant tanks and that became a big trashcan and there was a hatch and they could just put their trash to the hatch and it would go down to the lower level. But, the orbital workshop then was the largest part of the skylab space station, but, above it there was an air lot module that enabled them to go outside and to serve as a big observatory, the solar observatory which was a wonderful, scientific facility attached to the orbital workshop. And, using the instruments, variety of cameras and detectors , what was called the apollo telescope mount we got our first really detailed use of activity on the sun, and we understood, for the first time, how dynamic the sun is, how it is just spewing out big explosions of matter and it has holes in it and it has storms on it and it was an amazing thing to get this new information through the telescopes on skylab. So at the top you can see the docking port for the apollo commanding Service Module which is essentially the shuttlecraft to bring astronauts to skylab and bring them back home again. The whole thing is 22 feet in diameter and, again, when you think of the ingenuity of turning the stage of a rocket which is basically a big fuel tank into a home, that people can live in and you can provide them with plumbing and comfort and room to move around a window to look out to enjoy the view of the earth, this was a kind of turning point in our Space Program. Skylab was the test run for the next big thing that we are supposed to be. And, from the late 1950s and 1960s on the planners in the United States had foreseen an eventual space station. In fact, the original plan was to build a space station first and then go to the moon but, president kennedy reversed that and decided to send the United States to the moon first as part of the cold war competition with the soviet union. So, in the back of everybodys mind that there was still a space station and skylab was the First Step Towards what now has become the International Space station a huge new facility in earth orbit. This behemoth behind me is actually the backup skylab space station. It is flight ready. Nasa built two of them in case they wanted to do to Skylab Missions or, in case there was a hardware problem with the first skylab orbital workshop. We did make a modification to it. Ordinarily we dont modify flight ready hardware but in this case, we cut a passageway to doors into it and laid down a sort of hallway go right through the middle of the living quarters so people who visit the museum can walk inside skylab, they can see the living quarters, they can look into the bathroom at acm manikin at the table with some food out on the table. The shower is set up there. The exercise bicycle is in plain view and they can see the airlock right there and if they look up, they can just be wowed by the amount of free space there is. Second i mentioned that skylab was occupied in 1973 in 1974. The last crew to leave skylab buttoned it up and put it into sleep mode with a view towards a future crew possibly coming back. And, nasa got busy developing the shuttle so what happened to skylab maxwell, gradually over time the orbit began to deteriorate somewhat and it started dropping lower and lower and there was an early plan to use the Space Shuttle to go up and rendezvous with it to boost it back up to a higher altitude so it could still be available for use. But, this shuttle wasnt yet ready to fly. So, what happened is, after the orbit diminished, nasa had to bring it back in a controlled reentry and so in 1979, skylab was brought back down, it streaked into earths atmosphere like a meteor, it broke up over the indian ocean and a few pieces fell in parts of australia and were recovered but fortunately no one was hit, no one was injured and no property was damaged. Ipods sera skyway because this was still news in 1976 when the Museum Opened. People streamed in here, literally by the millions that first year. They were thrilled not only to see the old aircraft but to see the new spacecraft, to see what had been happening in space that they had seen on the news and heard about and, skylab was one of these featured attractions. Skylab was about settling down in space. Throughout the 1960s, the impetus had been to get into space, to get into orbit, to get to the moon. After space race was won by the Museum Opened<\/a> in july 1976, almost every space artifact on display had recently been in the news. This was very much a museum of contemporary spaceflight and it was for most people, their first chance to see what had been lauded in the 1960s and early 1970s during this heroic age of space exploration, when humans first ventured off the planet into space and all the way to the moon, when the United States<\/a> and the soviet union began sending craft out to explore the nearby planets. All of this was exciting, thrilling, and people just flocked into the museum to see it. In the 40 years since the building opened, we have continued to acquire treasures of space history. We have now about 17,000 artifacts related to space history. We have just over 1000 of them on display in two locations here in the washington area, and then we have another 1500 on display and other museums around the world. In the tour today, we are going to look at some of the original artifacts that were the stars of the show when the National Aerospace<\/a> Museum Opened<\/a> and we are also going to look at artifacts from history that have been made since then. We will start our tour right here with the lunar module. The icon for the landing on the moon in july 1969. It actually has a companion spacecraft that the apollo command module and, the command module for the Service Module<\/a> in the lunar module together carried three astronauts, Neil Armstrong<\/a> and buzz aldrin and Michael Collins<\/a> to the moon. The command module, very significantly also brought them back safely. This and lunar module is an actual lunar module that never flew in space. Its a lunar module number two and was intended to be used in an earth orbital test flight but the test was canceled as unnecessary, so nasa transferred the lunar module to the national air and space museum. It consists of two parts, the base, which has the legs and the rocket engine in it and then, the oddly shaped top, which is the crew module or crew cabin. And, this was attached to the command module for the flight from earth to lunar orbit. Once in lunar orbit, the two crewmembers who would descend to the surface, armstrong and aldrin, climbed into the lunar module it is separated from the command module where Michael Collins<\/a> stayed to orbit the moon , in it began its descent down to the surface. Fall forward, fall forward drifting to the right a little. Now back right, engine stopped, we copy it down, you go. The eagle has landed. This was a thrilling moment in history and, almost everybody who was alive at that moment remembered where they were whether they were watching on television in their own homes or if they were standing in an Appliance Store<\/a> watching it on a television, people around the world stop to watch the landing on the moon and the first steps of human beings on the moon. Step off to landed now. That is once small step for man, one giant leap for mankind. After the crew, the apollo 11 crew had climbed out and done some exploration close to the lunar module, collected some samples of lunar soil and rocks, taken some photographs, placed a u. S. Flag on the moon, they went back into the lunar module and this became the vehicle for their trip home. They launched the small top portion leaving the base on the moon and they ascended back up into lunar orbit rendezvoused with the command module again and exited the lunar module and once they were secure inside of the command module they reunited with Michael Collins<\/a>, the lunar module was detached and it fell back to the moon with an intentional crash on the moon because they just wanted to be able to track what kind of impact it made on the moon. So, from a space historians point of view, these two craft, the apollo command module and the lunar module are the icons of the space race along with the seats to best suits worn by astronauts on the moon these symbolize a historic moment in time, july 1969, when human beings first set foot on another body in our solar system and in effect, one the space race. When children look at this spacecraft, they often say that doesnt look like a spaceship because we tend to think that spacecraft are always streamlined and maybe they look like rockets more than anything else but, this spacecraft has an interesting design and in many ways it is fairly primitive, given the job that it has to do, it did not need to be streamlined on the outside because it was not going to operate in the atmosphere that it would only operate in the vacuum of space and it would not be subject to strong gravitational field on the moon so, its actually fairly flimsy in some areas, the legs are obviously strong, the amount for the rocket engine is stronger but the crew module or crew cabin was fairly spartan it had two windows, Neil Armstrong<\/a> had command of the craft during the final dissent and landing, both of them were standing, they were fully suited in spacesuits and they pretty much filled that interior volume in that position with the spacesuits on. It was not really designed for comfort, it was designed for the purpose of landing and giving the crew an exit so they could spend a couple of hours on the surface of the moon and then, launching again along with the precious cargo of lunar soil and rocks to bring back home, to demonstrate that they had been there and to have those materials for scientists to begin analyzing to better understand the moon. Its also amazing to think that the computing tower required in that day, to send the craft to the moon and to program them for the dissent and the launch. What is done is fairly primitive computer programs and memory was minuscule compared to the memory we have now. It is often said that the Computing Power<\/a> we hold in our hands every day, with our smart phones, is vastly more than it took to send people to the moon and back. This gives you a sense of the ingenuity of the engineers in that day to devise the solutions to get people to the moon and back safely. So, we have seen the iconic artifacts from the heroic age of spaceflight in the 1960s. Just feet away from it is the much more contemporary spacecraft, spaceship one. The first craft that was privately developed, not by nasa , not by the u. S. Government, but, by a company headed by an ingenious aircraft designer, spaceship one was the first privately developed craft ever to be launched into space, return to earth, be launched again and return to earth with a human on board. By doing that in 2004, spaceship one won a prize of 10 million that was posted to encourage commercial development of spacecraft that could be used for space tourism. Spaceship one operates as a suborbital craft and doesnt going to orbit around the earth but it goes up makes a loop into space and then glides back down to a landing but there is a mothership that theres transporter aircraft, the mothership flies around in the atmosphere and then it is released from that and, after its released is when the rocket engine ignites and shoots straight up. Spaceship one is a very innovative design in that it has a hybrid rocket thats part liquid propellant and part solid propellant. It can hold three people in prizewinning flights, it had only the pilot and some ballast to indicate the weight of two other people. And it has a very distinctive design. Its in a configuration with wings up at about 40 to 50,000 feet but the wings are down, its very streamlined looking but as it shoots up into orbit and we took the threshold but that stabilizes the craft for that loop over and orbit. The loop lasts about six minutes during which the pilot and any passengers would be able to experience weightlessness, if they wanted to unbuckle their seatbelts they would rise out of their seats and they can look through all the round windows and get a wonderful view of the curvature of the earth and the blackness of space. Then, as the craft begins to this end, the feathered wings stabilize the spacecraft and this is to stabilize the way a badminton birdie or shuttlecock is stabilized so that the nose stays downward pointing in the whole craft stays stable. It also creates more dragon slows the spacecraft down more quick so it doesnt need a bulky heatshield. So then, spaceship one comes back into the atmosphere and once its in the part of the atmosphere where there is enough air that it can fly aerodynamically again, the wings pivoted back down into the streamlined position and, the whole thing glides back down to a landing on the desert or on the runway. At this little starspangled craft that to me is reminiscent of a race car, it is sleek, it looks aerodynamic, it looks bd ends 40 and it just looks like the kind of craft that a person who wanted to go up into space for a quick look and a quick experience of weightlessness might want to climb in and go for a ride. Most of the space class the rest spacecraft in this museum come from our space agency. Nasa is a principal donor and at the end of nasas needs of the agency will transfer spacecraft and a variety of other equipment, so they can be preserved and displayed. Spaceship one is a different case in that it came from private enterprise and in this case we work directly with the owner of the designer and his business partner, paul allen and the cofounder of microsoft. We approach them after the first flight in june 2004, regardless of whether you win the prize or not, we think spaceshipone deserves to be in the National Collection<\/a> because it was the first privately developed spacecraft, piloted by human beings to go into space and return. You might notice theres a small dent in the nozzle of the engine of spaceshipone and thats not damage caused by delivering it to the museum or suspending it from the rafters but rather, that buckled in space, during its first test flight when the engine ignited and just the heat and the force of the engine ignition buckled the nozzle for the second flight and the third flight a different nozzle was used and they also made some corrections to the ignition sequence, so they didnt have the buckling problem again. But, when we asked to have spaceshipone delivered to us for the National Collection<\/a>, we asked to have it returned to the original configuration from the first flight. The first flight wasnt the prizewinning flight but it was the recordbreaking flight. So, they went to the trouble to reinstall the dented engine nozzle onto it. The next stop will be skylab and we will look at that because its the original artifact on display here since before the Museum Opened<\/a>. Skylab is so large that it was brought into the museum before the building was closed out. Now, im standing in front of a model of skylab as tall as i am but the real skylab orbital workstation behind me, absolutely dwarfed the model in me, it reaches from the floor into the skylight of the building cost two stories tall. Skylab was the United States<\/a> first space station placed in orbit in 1973 and in 1973 and 1974, three different nasa astronaut crews spent time porting it three men at a time, one group was there for one month and another group for two months and the third group for three months. And, the whole point of the Skylab Mission<\/a> was to get some experience living and working in space when the Apollo Program<\/a> came to an end, there was still hardware left over and nasa thought what could we do with this. We have developed a tremendous capability to launch a spacecraft all the way to the moon that we still have a couple powerful rockets on hand, can we repurpose them and do Something Else<\/a> . So the decision reached was to take the third state of the gigantic rocket that powered the spacecraft on a trajectory to the moon and turn that into a habitable module, sort of miniature space station that crews can live in while they were getting this experience after living and working in space. The actual element behind me is the full cylinder marked by a wide white band that you can see that its two stories on the inside and these are two floors where the astronauts could actually live but they have been in spacecraft that were essentially caulk bits, they had no more room in them than a sports car but, skylab was like having a house and it actually had rules in it. There was a galley ward room where they could prepare food, meet around a table, eat together, they were still eating out of plastic bags and at least it was more homelike and more sociable. They had sleeping quarters, three little bunk areas about the size of closets but each member had a private area to retire for solitary time and sleep without being confined to the flight see and a capsule and most important had an actual bathroom. It had an actual toilet and all these previous submissions, the littleknown dirty secret is that the astronauts were using plastic bags to collect their waste but finally they had a toilet and they didnt have to deal with the mass of taking care of the bodily functions. It had a sink where they could wash up and shave and it even had a shower which was, essentially a tunnel like shes that an astronaut pulled up around him and they could use water from a sprayer. It was more trouble than it was worth, they would just take sponge baths but there was room for them to have an exercise bicycle and to have experiments set up in a huge attic above the living area where the extra supplies were stored and the systems elements were there. But, it was so big he could read track and do tumbling around the perimeter of it just running in tumbling across the tops of the lockers it was for fun but they use that space for serious reasons to and they were testing out a jet backpack that might be used and were able to operate that in the attic space that was so commodious. Then, below the living deck floor, there was the remainder of one of the propellant tanks and that became a big trashcan and there was a hatch and they could just put their trash to the hatch and it would go down to the lower level. But, the orbital workshop then was the largest part of the skylab space station, but, above it there was an air lot module that enabled them to go outside and to serve as a big observatory, the solar observatory which was a wonderful, scientific facility attached to the orbital workshop. And, using the instruments, variety of cameras and detectors , what was called the apollo telescope mount we got our first really detailed use of activity on the sun, and we understood, for the first time, how dynamic the sun is, how it is just spewing out big explosions of matter and it has holes in it and it has storms on it and it was an amazing thing to get this new information through the telescopes on skylab. So at the top you can see the docking port for the apollo commanding Service Module<\/a> which is essentially the shuttlecraft to bring astronauts to skylab and bring them back home again. The whole thing is 22 feet in diameter and, again, when you think of the ingenuity of turning the stage of a rocket which is basically a big fuel tank into a home, that people can live in and you can provide them with plumbing and comfort and room to move around a window to look out to enjoy the view of the earth, this was a kind of turning point in our Space Program<\/a>. Skylab was the test run for the next big thing that we are supposed to be. And, from the late 1950s and 1960s on the planners in the United States<\/a> had foreseen an eventual space station. In fact, the original plan was to build a space station first and then go to the moon but, president kennedy reversed that and decided to send the United States<\/a> to the moon first as part of the cold war competition with the soviet union. So, in the back of everybodys mind that there was still a space station and skylab was the First Step Towards<\/a> what now has become the International Space<\/a> station a huge new facility in earth orbit. This behemoth behind me is actually the backup skylab space station. It is flight ready. Nasa built two of them in case they wanted to do to Skylab Mission<\/a>s or, in case there was a hardware problem with the first skylab orbital workshop. We did make a modification to it. Ordinarily we dont modify flight ready hardware but in this case, we cut a passageway to doors into it and laid down a sort of hallway go right through the middle of the living quarters so people who visit the museum can walk inside skylab, they can see the living quarters, they can look into the bathroom at acm manikin at the table with some food out on the table. The shower is set up there. The exercise bicycle is in plain view and they can see the airlock right there and if they look up, they can just be wowed by the amount of free space there is. Second i mentioned that skylab was occupied in 1973 in 1974. The last crew to leave skylab buttoned it up and put it into sleep mode with a view towards a future crew possibly coming back. And, nasa got busy developing the shuttle so what happened to skylab maxwell, gradually over time the orbit began to deteriorate somewhat and it started dropping lower and lower and there was an early plan to use the Space Shuttle<\/a> to go up and rendezvous with it to boost it back up to a higher altitude so it could still be available for use. But, this shuttle wasnt yet ready to fly. So, what happened is, after the orbit diminished, nasa had to bring it back in a controlled reentry and so in 1979, skylab was brought back down, it streaked into earths atmosphere like a meteor, it broke up over the indian ocean and a few pieces fell in parts of australia and were recovered but fortunately no one was hit, no one was injured and no property was damaged. Ipods sera skyway because this was still news in 1976 when the Museum Opened<\/a>. People streamed in here, literally by the millions that first year. They were thrilled not only to see the old aircraft but to see the new spacecraft, to see what had been happening in space that they had seen on the news and heard about and, skylab was one of these featured attractions. Skylab was about settling down in space. Throughout the 1960s, the impetus had been to get into space, to get into orbit, to get to the moon. After space race was won by the United States<\/a> with the landings on the moon in 1969 through 1972, most the soviet Space Program<\/a> began to shift gears. So, as we build skylab in the early 1970s, the soviets were also beginning to develop a space station, in fact, a series of space stations and there was a moment there in the early to mid 1970s when soviet and u. S. Tension abated somewhat and the two Space Program<\/a>s, the two nations decided to do a cooperative venture in space and that occurred in 1975. It was a rendezvous and docking in space of an apollo spacecraft in the United States<\/a> from the soviet union. It was billed as a historic handshake in space because when the two craft docked and opened their hatches to the docking module between them, the american commander and the russian commander came together and shook hands and at the time it was hoped that this might be the beginning of a new era of cooperation in space but, that son relations didnt last long and so, really throughout the letter 1970s and 1980s, the u. S. Went on with developing the Space Shuttle<\/a>, the soviets went on with developing a series of solute space stations and then a much larger space station called mirror. It was not until the collapse of the soviet union in 1992 that another opportunity arose to have a cooperative relationship in space. But the partners, europe, japan and canada invited the new russia into partnership and the International Space<\/a> station. Since then our activities in space of been carried out on a operative basis. Now in the moving beyond earth gallery, this is where we treat human spaceflight in the area of the Space Shuttle<\/a> and the International Space<\/a> station. This happened since the Museum Opened<\/a>, 1976, in fact in that year, the first Space Shuttle<\/a>, the text vehicle enterprise made its debut and it was greeted as a revolution in space craft design. This was the first spacecraft to look like an airplane and the first reusable spacecraft that could return to earth, land, be serviced and fly again. But this is all about practical uses of space and practical aspects to space and practical benefits of space. The feature is that it was a reusable space craft and by being reusable it was supposed to be more economical and more readily used for routine spaceflight. In fact, early on, the planners and designers that it might operate as regularly as an aircraft in service. It didnt work out that way turns out that even though it was a reusable craft, it was in many ways a complicated and sophisticated spacecraft i was standing in a distinctive feature of the Space Shuttle<\/a> which is one of the three main engines that powered the craft back to liquid reusable engines that had not been done before. These operate with a greater degree of efficiency and reliability than any other rocket engine had done before. The Space Shuttle<\/a> main engines are one of the great technical challenges of the Space Shuttle<\/a> program and we are fortunate to have one here that was made up for us of parts and components that flew on quite a variety of missions. As a whole it wasnt flown in space, it has flight components on it so we are pleased to have that. We do have, the Space Shuttle<\/a> discovery on display at our second location and near dallas airport. It was delivered to us without main engines. It was delivered only with nozzles because nasa chose to save the engines they were so highly prized they chose to save them for possible use on the next launch vehicle. If we are lucky, one day we may get one of those, that would be one that had actually flown in space. On the wall behind the main engine is a crosssection of the other main proponent element and thats a slice of a solid rocket booster. Its actually a slice of a model of a solid rocket booster. But, in addition to the rocket engines that were physically integrated into the shuttle orbiter there were twin solid rocket boosters mounted on the side that the giant liquid propellant tank and, we commission that model of the crosssection to show the pattern in that rocket booster where the solid fuel first begins to burn. Its like a star shape or a snowflake shape pattern and that increases the efficiency of the fuel burn and produces a tremendous amount of thrust through the twin solid rocket boosters they burned out within two minutes of ignition and fell away from the shuttle. The main engine consumed fuel from the external tank for 8 1 2 minutes and the tank fell away just before the Space Shuttle<\/a> entered orbit. A totally revolutionary way of sending a spacecraft into orbit. This is really the theme of this whole gallery, a new way of doing spaceflight in the shuttle era. As i mentioned, the shuttle era began in away, in 1976 when the Museum Opened<\/a>. The first actual shuttle launch into space was not until 1981. But, then for 30 following years that there were 135 Space Shuttle<\/a> missions of the two of them completely successful. The two that failed were the challenger and columbia but then , stf 107 in 2003. In talking about the shuttle in this gallery, we do talk about what was revolutionary about it and we also do acknowledge that it was not a perfect technical system in that it did not perform exactly as planned and it did result in the two tragedies. So, we didnt want to gloss over any of that but we wanted to make the point that doing something revolutionary always entails risk and working with new Technology Operating<\/a> at really, the far margins of performance adds to the element of risk. On the other hand, the whole Space Shuttle<\/a> system consisted of millions of components that had to work perfectly every time and, in most occasions that is exactly what happened. So, we have a section in here about the design of the shuttle the various options that were considered before the final design was settled on, whether they can make it a fully reusable vehicle or partially reusable, a partial one out for economic reasons. We also talk about living and working in space on the shuttle because the shuttles serve the various purposes. It was a delivery truck and could carry satellites into orbit. It was a shortterm space station. When the laboratory was in the payload bay it actually served as a Research Center<\/a> in space. It served as a servicing station with the Hubble Space Telescope<\/a> that astronauts could do repairs in orbit and prolong the life of the observatory. Then, finally it was a construction site for the International Space<\/a> station and, all of the large modules, all of the solar rays and all of the long tresses that make up the International Space<\/a> station that were carried up into space in the payload bay of the Space Shuttle<\/a>. The Space Shuttle<\/a> also had a profound impact on the Astronaut Corps<\/a> and on our perception of human spaceflight because up until that point, the Astronaut Corps<\/a> had consisted entirely of men and, the majority of them were test pilots. Many of them also combat pilots who were very experienced in highaltitude flight under extreme conditions. Some scientist said been admitted into the Astronaut Corps<\/a> and one of the scientists went to the moon and three of them surfed on skylab but, because the shuttle had a different kind of mission to do research and useful work in space, it needed a crew that was more versatile than just pilots. It needed scientists and engineers to carry out its mission. Once the Astronaut Corps<\/a> needed more scientists and engineers, that opened up a pool of eligible candidates to become astronauts. So, in 1978, nasa selected its first astronaut for the Space Shuttle<\/a> era and they chose 35 and of the 35, six were women, three were africanamerican men, one was an Asian Pacific<\/a> heritage man and, from that point on the shuttle Astronaut Program<\/a> was much more diverse and it became more reflective of who we are as the american people. So, in 1983, within the first 10 missions, a woman flew in space on the seventh mission, sally ride and African Americans<\/a> were in space on the eighth mission, and we have on display in this gallery other flight suits that they presented to the museum after the historic flights. Certainly, sally ride became a hero to girls and women. She was one of six women in the Astronaut Corps<\/a> and happened to be the one chosen to fly first and so, she ended up being the one who got credit for breaking the barrier and became a hero then for the rest of her life. Guy bluford had the same impact on the africanamerican community. Second by the time the Shuttle Program<\/a> ended in 2011, about 20 of the Astronaut Corps<\/a> had been women and about 12 had been africanamerican. Women and africanamericans had served in every role and they had been pilot commanders space walker, mission scientists, they had demonstrated very well the people who are capable full and have the right skills and the right drive and motivation could be successful astronauts. The last a big task for the Space Shuttle<\/a> was actually the original task, the task it was designed for with a large payload bay and that was construction of the International Space<\/a> station. It took about 40 missions to assemble the International Space<\/a> station in orbit starting in 1999 and completing in 2011. The space station, as it exists now, depicted here in the gallery in a model that we have suspended, its a one through 100 model scale. The actual International Space<\/a> station is the size of a football field. From end zone to end zone and from sideline to sideline. That gives you a sense of tremendous technological endeavor to build something of that size in space. Weve been in earth orbit for a few minutes here but why dont we go to mars. Just outside the gallerys vikings, the first spacecraft to land on mars. Here we are at viking, the first spacecraft to land on mars , its actually one of two vikings that landed on mars and this is another thing that was in the news at the time that this Museum Opened<\/a> in 1976. To have landed on mars after a number of trials and mrs. Was very exciting. The russians and the United States<\/a> had been trying to put a craft onto the surface of mars. This is equipped as a sort of observatory and a sort of laboratory. It had the scoop of a long arm that would scoop up some soil near the landing site and dump it into a little container it would be subjected to some chemistry tests to determine if there were any organic compacts or any moisture in it, anything that might have been conducive to life. In fact, in a very simplified version of things, the viking lander was going to look for signs of life on mars, that is how the public perceived it. The Scientific Community<\/a> was interested in a whole variety of other questions, what was the composition of the rocks . What was the surface environment like. So, it had a weather station, a variety of instruments and this was the first chance to really touch and feel the surface rocks and other bodies in the moon, tremendously exciting in the beginning of what is become a long history but each time to learn more about that neighboring planet which has long occupied peoples imaginations as the likeliest next destination for human exploration. Landers like the viking lander open the door towards that possible eventual human exploration of planet mars. Vikings went into their respective landing sites that have been dormant now for a number of years and they are just hitting their on the surface of mars waiting to be rediscovered either by a rover or by some eventual human explorer. This viking is an exact duplicate or triplicate of the two that went to mars but this viking was kept at the jet Propulsion Laboratory<\/a> and during the mission they used it as a test case to try to try out procedures and do troubleshooting for any problems they detected with the surface landers on mars. So, this lander was really part of that family. Exploration developed according to a well thought out strategy but remember, back in the 1960s when all of this was brandnew, we didnt know exact where the moon was or were mars or venus was. We knew approximately where they were but you need to know that much more exactly if youre going to launch a spacecraft from planet earth which is in motion. The spacecraft will be in motion and the planetary destination will be in motion. So, theres a lot of calculation that goes into that and in the early 1960s and mid 1960s, there are a lot of misses. We would shoot something towards the moon and it would sail right past or missed it by a long shot or the soviets would do the same thing or, we would try to land something on the moon and it would crash into it instead. So, it was kind of a Demolition Derby<\/a> in the 1960s. But, that was really the essential first stage, to start sending craft out to flyby and to increasingly get closer and closer so you could determine exactly where they were and what the celestial mechanics of spaceflight really were at an exacting level. So, after the flyby was perfected, and the purpose of that was to get a first good look, cameras on board could send back images to get a sense of what the body was like. Then, the next step was to send something to go into orbit around it and again with cameras and other instruments to try to determine what is the surface like, on the atmosphere, what more can we learn by being closer to it and staying in orbit around it. Again there were near misses on those orbiters as well. But, by the early 1970s, that problem was pretty well solved. So, you had flyby, then you go into orbit then you send a lander but the next step is to send a rover so that you can learn about not only the immediate landing side were craft like vikings sit but you can start ranging out around answer doing what human beings do you still exploring, extend the range, look around the neck still to see what is there. So, the next phase in our exploration has been rovers and the next step will be to take a look at three generations of mars rovers. So now, were in the exploring the planet gallery where we really focus on recent events in planetary exploration. As we learned with viking, the strategy tends to move from having a static lander which viking was and this is one of my favorite parts of the museum because this is where we display the three rovers that have been doing a Major Research<\/a> on the planet mars over the last 20 years but there was one identical to this one and it was part of the Pathfinder Mission<\/a> of 1996 and a little rover was put down on the surface of mars and has operated long beyond its expect did lifetime. But theres a kind of wheel called rocker wheels that enable it to go over rock without tipping over. Its about the size of a microwave oven. If you imagine a microwave oven having wheels, they had solar panels on top to keep powered and it was a little geologist and this could do some of the kinds of investigations that a human geologist with do. It is equipped with the device to determine what chemical elements are in the rock. It had a camera for guidance and it was without the ambient environment of mars so you can think of this one. We could destroy explore a broader area and this is actually a backup for the Pathfinder Mission<\/a>. 10 years later, after the Pathfinder Mission<\/a> that we had another mission that landed a somewhat larger rover on mars and god this is a model of spirit and opportunity. This is an engineering model that isnt really ready to go to mars but you can see the growth since the first rover. This one is more like the size of a golf cart perhaps. Again, it has special wheels so it can operate well on the uneven terrain and its equipped, not only with solar panels to keep it powered up but with larger and more sophisticated instruments. It has robotic arms that it extends out and it has almost ahead here at the front at the top of this long neck and that is where the cameras are for the movement around, enabling scientists here on earth to see where its going and to see what it is seeing. It has various other scientific devices on it and again, a kind of mars weather station to determine what the ambient environment is like, what is the wind like i what are the temperatures at different times during the day, what is it like when a dust storm blows up and passes through. So again, this is a more capable geologist now on the surface of mars. But, when they are mimicking some of the capabilities that a human being has. Heres the opportunity launch to mars in the year 2004. And now, you have a look at the third rover on the surface of mars and this one landed in 2012 and is still working today. This is a model of curiosity. Curiosity has just grabbed public attention because first of all, its a big and its like having a car on mars and, this is the one that had a very dramatic landing surface where it was dropped from a crane that was descending from the orbital spacecraft and, it was called seven minutes of tear to get it down to the surface of mars without it being damaged but it had a very successful landing and curiosity has been roaming for kilometers on the surface of mars, it is studying planes on the rim of a crater, going down into the crater to have a look at what the surface geology is like there. The main mention of curiosity is to follow the water. Scientists have a lot of evidence that at some point in the past that mars had a lot of water and, the evidence is in sedimentation on mars and in portions of the land that look as if theyve been washed over by water which then evaporated. So, the curiosity rover is to investigate sites that seem to have had an abundance of water at some time in the past. Once again this is a surrogate for a human geologist, much larger in scale than the pathfinder and the spirit and opportunity rovers, a much sturdier structure, a chassis that really is the size of a compact car, cameras and weather station instruments on board and this one is also a chemistry lab, there are several devices on here that can do analysis of the chemicals in the soil and rocks. Its really a very exciting mission with no end in sight. I think the public has become very fond of the rovers because they sense that they are surrogates for us and may be pathfinders for us. They are doing the initial reconnaissance of the surface of mars, so that if, in the future the human actually go there they will know a lot more about the train and also a lot more about sites that might still harbor moisture, if not actual water. This pattern replicates what we did when we went to the moon. We started with missions that first flew past the moon but one of the next things we did was set a lander on the moon to determine how strong is the soil , can something land there or will it sink in. If humans are going to land, will they be able to walk on the moon, i think we are quite confident about mars, that humans will be able to move around on the surface of mars very well. The rovers have demonstrated how easy it is to do that. One the thing about the rovers is they dont operate alone and preprogrammed, there are whole teams here on earth that are charting out the itineraries and scheduling the activities and, when they are working on the mission in their heads, they are on mars, with the rover and, they even wear watches where they set their lot to martian time. The martian day is 24 hours and 39 minutes and so, their day is just enough longer than hours that for the people working on earth each day they start work 39 minutes later. The days creep ahead for them so, when the Museum Opened<\/a> and we are wrapping up a golden age of human exploration and from the 1970s and mars and a golden age of planetary exploration, particularly on mars so actively exploring there and we are right in the present moment when we are with the mars rovers and i wonder what we might see here in 10 years or 20 years as exploration continues with Great Success<\/a> we hope and there is much talk about having a Human Mission<\/a> to mars by about 2030 or so. If that should happen, that will probably be the stellar attraction at the museum but by the time the next major anniversary rolls around. You can watch this or other american artifacts programs at any time by visiting our website at cspan. Org history. Week we are featuring American History<\/a> tv programs is a preview of whats available every weekend on cspan3. Lectures in history, american artifacts, real america, the civil war, World History<\/a> the presidency and special event coverage about our nations history. Enjoy American History<\/a> tv now and every weekend on cspan3","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"archive.org","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","width":"800","height":"600","url":"\/\/ia803004.us.archive.org\/11\/items\/CSPAN3_20190823_030100_American_Artifacts_Space_Exploration_From_the_Moon_to_Mars\/CSPAN3_20190823_030100_American_Artifacts_Space_Exploration_From_the_Moon_to_Mars.thumbs\/CSPAN3_20190823_030100_American_Artifacts_Space_Exploration_From_the_Moon_to_Mars_000001.jpg"}},"autauthor":{"@type":"Organization"},"author":{"sameAs":"archive.org","name":"archive.org"}}],"coverageEndTime":"20240716T12:35:10+00:00"}