BGuthrie Photos: DC -- Natl Air and Space Museum -- Gallery 113: (a) Moving Beyond Earth

DC -- Natl Air and Space Museum -- Gallery 113: (a) Moving Beyond Earth:

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Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. GAL113_140706_005.JPG: Moving Beyond Earth
2. GAL113_140706_012.JPG: Buck Rogers Patrol Ship Wind-Up Toy: Buck Rogers' spaceship combined the fantasy world of space travel with the exciting new world of air travel during aviation's "golden age." With this Louis Marx action toy from 1934, you could imagine yourself zipping through space in Buck's own winged rocket plane.
3. GAL113_140706_024.JPG: Fantasy: Buck Rogers Wings Through Space: Winged space vehicles appeared in the science fiction of Buck Rogers, a long-running daily newspaper comic strip that first appeared in 1929. A Sunday strip, a radio program, and movies soon followed. Readers, listeners, and moviegoers in the 1930s and beyond eagerly followed the adventures of Buck and his fantastic winged spaceship.
4. GAL113_140706_027.JPG: Theory: The Silver Bird Adds Science to Fiction: While Buck Rogers fired people's imaginations about space travel, some people in the 1930s were thinking about how to create real spaceplanes. Austrian aerospace designer Eugen Sanger worked on a concept he called the Silver Bird, a combination booster rocket and glider. It had short, wedge-shaped wings and a flattened fuselage to crate lift. His spaceplane concept predated the Space Shuttle by about 30 years.
5. GAL113_140706_031.JPG: During World War II, Singer worked to transform his Silver Bird concept into an "orbital bomber" that would travel continental distances by skipping across the edge of space. The bomber was never built, but US engineers in the 1940s carefully studied Singer's spaceplane designs.
6. GAL113_140706_034.JPG: The Exploration of Mars, 1956 Chesley Bonestell Some believed spaceplanes could have a role beyond Earth orbit. Spaceflight visionaries Wernher von Braun, Willy Ley, and Chesley Bonestell published a book in 1956 describing a spaceplane journey to Mars. They envisioned a winged spacecraft that would glide through the thin Martian atmosphere to land. For the return trip, the astronauts would remove the winged stage and tilt the rocket stage upright for launch.
7. GAL113_140706_042.JPG: Walt Disney and Wernher von Braun, technical director of the Army's ballistic missile program, pose with models featured in "Man and the Moon," one of three television programs about possible spaceflight that Disney produced in the 1950s.
8. GAL113_140706_046.JPG: Artist Chesley Bonestell brought to life the spaceplane concept of rocket engineer Wernher von Braun in a magazine series about spaceflight.
9. GAL113_140706_053.JPG: Goodyear Meteor Jr. This three-stage, fully reusable, winged spaceplane concept emerged in the 1950s. The urgency of the Cold War would rule out this technologically sophisticated approach. Instead, the US Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs would rely on capsules launched on single-use rockets.
10. GAL113_140706_058.JPG: Another approach to a reusable spacecraft involved generating lift through its body shape rather than wings. NASA carried out research with several "lifting body" designs in the 1960s to learn how to reduce drag and maintain control in subsonic, supersonic, and hypersonic flight. These lifting body aircraft, including the M2-F3 (center), proved such a craft could make accurate landings without power. Lifting body research helped shape the Space Shuttle orbiter design.
11. GAL113_140706_061.JPG: The X-15 bridged the gap between human flight in the atmosphere and in space. Designed to fly very high and very fast, three X-15s made 199 flights from 1958 to 1969, setting many altitude and speed records. Research pilot Neil Armstrong (shown here) flew X-15s before NASA selected him to be an astronaut.
12. GAL113_140706_068.JPG: Rocket engineer Wernher von Braun, artist Chesley Bonestell, and other space advocates presented a compelling vision of future spaceflight in the 1950s. This panorama of a giant rotating wheel-shaped station with a spaceplane nearby helped shape popular ideas of what human spaceflight would be like.
13. GAL113_140706_071.JPG: Destination Shuttling to a Space Station In almost all futuristic visions of human space exploration, a massive Earth-orbiting space station serves as the jumping-off point for journeys to the Moon and planets. Space enthusiasts believed a permanently occupied space station was an essential companion to a spaceplane. Austrian engineer Hermann Noordung offered one of the earliest and most technically detailed concepts of a space station in 1929. It included a separate power station and a nearby observatory.
14. GAL113_140706_073.JPG: A Space Shuttle for a New Era Having reached the Moon and won the Space Race, the United States chose a new direction. Why did NASA decide to develop a reusable Space Shuttle when it could have continued to use the disposable rockets and capsules that proved so successful for Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo? U.S. goals in space changed after the race to the Moon. The new emphasis was routine, practical, lower-cost spaceflight in Earth orbit. A space station became the long-term goal. The workhorse for this new era would be reusable winged spaceplane that could land on a runway and fly again.
15. GAL113_140706_084.JPG: A Space Shuttle for a New Era Having reached the Moon and won the Space Race, the United States chose a new direction. Why did NASA decide to develop a reusable Space Shuttle when it could have continued to use the disposable rockets and capsules that proved so successful for Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo? U.S. goals in space changed after the race to the Moon. The new emphasis was routine, practical, lower-cost spaceflight in Earth orbit. A space station became the long-term goal. The workhorse for this new era would be reusable winged spaceplane that could land on a runway and fly again.
16. GAL113_140706_109.JPG: External Tank Insulation: This is a mock-up of the external tank area under the orbiter nose where foam broke loose during Columbia's final ascent. The tank's lightweight foam insulation prevented the super-cold propellants from warming up and also protected the tank from the frictional heat of passage through the atmosphere.
17. GAL113_140706_119.JPG: The Space Shuttle: 30 Years of Service: The reusable Space Shuttle carried out more kinds of missions than any other vehicle for human spaceflight. Early optimism about routine spaceflight was tempered by experience. Costs remained high, flights were less frequent than predicted, and the Challenger and Columbia tragedies served as grim reminders that spaceflight is always risky, never quite routine. Ferried 852 crewmembers (355 individuals) Averaged 5 flights a year from 1981 to 2011. Visited the Russian Mir space station 9 times. Completed 10 national security missions for the Department of Defense. Deployed some 30 satellites, 3 planetary probes, and 3 of NASA's "Great Observatories". Made 37 trips to assemble and supply the International Space Station. Carried research experiments on every flight and large laboratories or observatory platforms more than 40 times. Flew 135 missions over 30 years with 2 tragic losses.
18. GAL113_140706_123.JPG: iving and Working in Space: How do we make a home and workplace in space? People here lived and worked in space almost continuously since the 1970s, first on Russian space stations and the US Skylab, then on Space Shuttle missions, and since 2000 on the International Space Station. The range of activities and duration of human presence in space continue to expand. Yet space is still a formidable place that presents both opportunities and hazards. Living and working beyond Earth have proven so challenging that much remained to be learned.
19. GAL113_140706_178.JPG: Commemorative American Flag Quilt: The Coastal Quilters Guild of Santa Barbara, California, created this memorial quilt for the family of NASA astronaut David Brown. Theirs was just one expression of the outpouring of sympathy for the astronauts' families.
20. GAL113_140706_193.JPG: Damaged CD from Columbia Debris: This data or music disc shows the effects of the high heat and aerodynamic forces of descent through the atmosphere.
21. GAL113_140706_199.JPG: What Caused the Tragedy? Investigators discovered that, during launch, a piece of foam insulation about the size of a briefcase broke off the external tank and struck the leading edge of Columbia's left wing. The impact broke a large hole in a carbon panel that helped protect the wing edge from heat. During reentry, superheated air flowed into the wing, melted the aluminum airframe, and threw the orbiter out of control. When shuttle flights resumed in 2005, NASA put new safety measures in place, including cameras to observe the external tank for detached foam and to inspect the orbiter's wings and underside for damage. The astronauts also learned to do repairs in order if their vehicle suffered damage during launch. In a test, a piece of the tank's insulation fired from an air cannon blasted a gaping hole in a carbon leading edge panel, confirming what remnants of Columbia indicated. Other Causes: The Columbia Accident Investigation Board determined that the same causes that contributed to the Challenger tragedy also affected the fate of Columbia: flawed analysis and decision making and "a broken safety culture." The board also concluded that NASA was under pressure to "do too much with too little." After the loss of Columbia, NASA mandated a new orbital inspection procedure. Just before docking at the International Space Station, the shuttle had to do a complete nose-over-tail back flip so the crew inside the space station could photograph the entire underside. Analysts on the ground carefully studied these images for any signs of damage.
22. GAL113_140706_203.JPG: Commemorative US Flag: This flag flew above the US Capital in Washington DC, on February 1, 2003, in memory of the seven astronauts lost that morning around Columbia.
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Description of Subject Matter: Moving Beyond Earth
November 19, 2009 – March 27, 2022
This exhibition explores the achievements and challenges of human spaceflight in the United States during the space shuttle and space station era through artifacts, immersive experiences, and interactive computer stations. Highlights include:
* A space shuttle main engine and middeck crew cabin outfitted for flight
* An autonomous robot and flown-in-space science experiment apparatus
* Astronaut clothing and crew equipment
* Shuttle toys and space memorabilia
* A 12-foot-tall space-shuttle model and other launch-vehicle models
* A presentation center for live events, broadcasts, and webcasts
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Directly Related Pages: Other pages with content (DC -- Natl Air and Space Museum -- Gallery 113: (a) Moving Beyond Earth) directly related to this one: [Display ALL photos on one page]:
- 2013_DC_SIAIR_Gall113A: DC -- Natl Air and Space Museum -- Gallery 113: (a) Moving Beyond Earth (86 photos from 2013)
- 2010_DC_SIAIR_Gall113A: DC -- Natl Air and Space Museum -- Gallery 113: (a) Moving Beyond Earth (14 photos from 2010)
Same Subject: Click on this link to see coverage of items having the same subject: [(Smithsonian) Air and Space Museum (Everything)] [(Smithsonian) Air and Space Museum (Non-Events)] [Museums (History)]
2014 photos: Equipment this year: I mostly used my Fuji XS-1 camera but, depending on the event, I also used a Nikon D7000. Trips this year: three Civil War Trust conferences (Winchester, VA, Nashville, TN, and Atlanta, GA), Michigan to visit mom in the hospice before she died and then a return trip after she died, and my 9th consecutive San Diego Comic-Con trip (including Las Vegas, Reno, Carson City, Sacramento, Oakland, and Los Angeles). Ego strokes: Paul Dickson used one of my photos as the author photo in his book "Aphorisms: Words Wrought by Writers". Number of photos taken this year: just over 470,000.
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