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:

Bruce Guthrie Photos Home Page: [Click here] to go to Bruce Guthrie Photos home page.

Recognize anyone? If you recognize specific folks (or other stuff) and I haven't labeled them, please identify them for the world. Click the little pencil icon

underneath the file name (just above the picture). Spammers need not apply.

Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks including AI scrapers can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.

Accessing as Spider: The system has identified your IP as being a spider.
IP Address: 3.15.147.53 -- Domain: Amazon Technologies
I love well-behaved spiders! They are, in fact, how most people find my site. Unfortunately, my network has a limited bandwidth and pictures take up bandwidth. Spiders ask for lots and lots of pages and chew up lots and lots of bandwidth which slows things down considerably for regular folk. To counter this, you'll see all the text on the page but the images are being suppressed. Also, some system options like merges are being blocked for you.
Note: Permission is NOT granted for spiders, robots, etc to use the site for AI-generation purposes. I'm sure you're thrilled by your ability to make revenue from my work but there's nothing in that for my human users or for me.
If you are in fact human, please email me at guthrie.bruce@gmail.com and I can check if your designation was made in error. Given your number of hits, that's unlikely but what the hell.

Help? The Medium (Email) links are for screen viewing and emailing. You'll want bigger sizes for printing. [Click here for additional help]

Share: Facebook Twitter Digg
[1] GAL113_140706_005.JPG	[2] GAL113_140706_012.JPG	[3] GAL113_140706_020.JPG
[4] GAL113_140706_024.JPG	[5] GAL113_140706_027.JPG	[6] GAL113_140706_031.JPG
[7] GAL113_140706_034.JPG	[8] GAL113_140706_042.JPG	[9] GAL113_140706_046.JPG
[10] GAL113_140706_053.JPG	[11] GAL113_140706_058.JPG	[12] GAL113_140706_061.JPG
[13] GAL113_140706_068.JPG	[14] GAL113_140706_071.JPG	[15] GAL113_140706_073.JPG
[16] GAL113_140706_084.JPG	[17] GAL113_140706_087.JPG	[18] GAL113_140706_090.JPG
[19] GAL113_140706_094.JPG	[20] GAL113_140706_099.JPG	[21] GAL113_140706_103.JPG
[22] GAL113_140706_109.JPG	[23] GAL113_140706_119.JPG	[24] GAL113_140706_123.JPG
[25] GAL113_140706_127.JPG	[26] GAL113_140706_131.JPG	[27] GAL113_140706_134.JPG
[28] GAL113_140706_137.JPG	[29] GAL113_140706_145.JPG	[30] GAL113_140706_149.JPG
[31] GAL113_140706_153.JPG	[32] GAL113_140706_156.JPG	[33] GAL113_140706_161.JPG
[34] GAL113_140706_166.JPG	[35] GAL113_140706_171.JPG	[36] GAL113_140706_174.JPG
[37] GAL113_140706_178.JPG	[38] GAL113_140706_193.JPG	[39] GAL113_140706_199.JPG
[40] GAL113_140706_203.JPG	[41] GAL113_140706_215.JPG

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.
AAA "Gem": AAA considers this location to be a "must see" point of interest. To see pictures of other areas that AAA considers to be Gems, click here.
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
Bigger photos? To save server space, the full-sized versions of these images have either not been loaded to the server or have been removed from the server. (Only some pages are loaded with full-sized images and those usually get removed after three months.) I still have them though. If you want me to email them to you, please send an email to guthrie.bruce@gmail.com and I can email them to you, or, depending on the number of images, just repost the page again will the full-sized images.
Connection Not Secure messages? Those warnings you get from your browser about this site not having secure connections worry some people. This means this site does not have SSL installed (the link is http:, not https:). That's bad if you're entering credit card numbers, passwords, or other personal information. But this site doesn't collect any personal information so SSL is not necessary. Life's good!
Photo Contact: [Email Bruce Guthrie].