DC -- Natl Air and Space Museum -- Gallery 114: (a) Space Race:
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GAL114_150824_027.JPG: V-2:
This V-2 missile was reconstructed by the US Air Force using components from several missiles and was exhibited at the Air Force Technical Museum in Park Ridge, Illinois. The Smithsonian took title in 1949.
In the mid-1970s, technicians spent more than 2,000 hours restoring this V-2 to its present appearance, which is patterned after the first successful test rocket fired from Peenemunde in October 1942. These markings made the missile easily visible for accurate assessment of its flight performance. The irregular surface of the missile reflects the poor condition of the original skin.
GAL114_150824_029.JPG: The Anatomy of a V-2
GAL114_150824_032.JPG: V-2: World's First Ballistic Missile:
V-2, or Vengeance Weapon 2 (Vergeltungswaffe zwei), was the name Nazi propagandists gave to the first ballistic missile ever developed to strike distant targets. German Army Ordnance had been developing liquid-propellant rockets since 1932, aiming to create a long-range surprise weapon. On October 3, 1942, the V-2 was first launched successfully from Peenemunde, Germany, on the Baltic Sea.
Late in World War II, Germany launched almost 3,000 V-2s against England, France, and Belgium. After the war, the United States and the Soviet Union used captured V-2s as a basis for developing their own large rockets.
GAL114_150824_040.JPG: V-2 Production
GAL114_150824_054.JPG: Building V-2s in quantity became a vast enterprise in 1944. Near the war's end, the Mittelwerk produced almost 700 V-2s monthly in its tunnels near Nordhausen.
GAL114_150824_064.JPG: WAC Corporal
GAL114_150824_066.JPG: Trying to Catch Up with the V-2
GAL114_150824_069.JPG: The Jet Propulsion Laboratory
GAL114_150824_080.JPG: The V-2 in the United States
GAL114_150824_097.JPG: Like the United States, the Soviet Union also relied on a group of German rocket engineers and scientists. Here are some of the leading figures at the first Soviet V-2 launch in the USSR in October 1947. From left to right: Karl Stahl, Johannes Hoch, Helmut Grottrup, Fritz Viebach, and Hans Vitter.
GAL114_150824_098.JPG: The rocket engineer Sergei Pavlovich Korolev in Germany, 1945. He went on to become the Chief Designer of the Soviet space program in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
GAL114_150824_105.JPG: The V-2 in the Soviet Union
GAL114_150824_109.JPG: V2 attacks on England
GAL114_150824_112.JPG: The V-2 in Action
GAL114_150824_114.JPG: Antwerp, Belgium, just after a V-2 strike. The V-2 demonstrated a new ability in warfare to send bombs quickly to a target. Traveling more than four times faster than sound after engine shut-down, the missiles struck without warning. The sound of the rock rushing through the air came after the explosion.
GAL114_150824_118.JPG: The V-2: From Deployment to Capture
GAL114_150824_125.JPG: The Allies asked surviving concentration camp workers to help inventory parts for V-2 missiles at the Nordhausen facility. One of the entrances to the underground factory is visible in the background.
GAL114_150824_128.JPG: U.S. Army Ordnance units, looking for useful V-2 components to ship to America, inspected bombed-out German supply trains.
GAL114_150824_131.JPG: This V-2 was displayed at the war's end in Washington, DC, near 12th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, NW. It symbolized not only the end of the war, but also the new shape of possible conflicts to come.
GAL114_150824_137.JPG: The Rush for the Spoils
GAL114_150824_143.JPG: The Museum's V-2 missile, when originally displayed at Park Ridge, Illinois, around 1500, bore a German operational camouflage paint scheme.
GAL114_150824_170.JPG: V-1:
The German V-1, introduced in combat in June 1944, was the world's first operational cruise missile. Thousands of pulse-jet powered V-1s, also known as "buzz bombs," were launched against cities in Europe. V-1s were slow and inaccurate; they could be intercepted and shot down.
GAL114_150824_194.JPG: Refining the Ultimate Weapon
The ICBM Decision
GAL114_150824_198.JPG: SCOUT: NASA's Workhorse
GAL114_150824_201.JPG: Scout-D
GAL114_150824_217.JPG: To The Moon
GAL114_150824_223.JPG: "Fill 'Er Up -- I'm in a Race"
by Herblock
GAL114_150824_225.JPG: "Who'll be there first?"
GAL114_150824_227.JPG: I'm also reading the Declaration of Independence -- Just in case
by Lou Grant
GAL114_150824_237.JPG: Sputnik Key
GAL114_150824_243.JPG: Inspecting TV-3, March 16, 2008
GAL114_150824_247.JPG: Payload, Vanguard Test Vehicle "TV-3"
GAL114_150824_249.JPG: Pressure on America
GAL114_150824_257.JPG: As Explorer Joins Sputnik
"Let me show you, Dud, how things are done."
"I feel better already."
GAL114_150824_258.JPG: America's First Success
GAL114_150824_264.JPG: Vying for the Lead
GAL114_150824_273.JPG: The Race Begins
GAL114_150824_279.JPG: Sputnik 2
More Sputnik Successes
GAL114_150824_281.JPG: Instructions for Sputnik Recovery
GAL114_150824_288.JPG: Ivan Ivanovich: Test Flight Mannequin
GAL114_150824_293.JPG: Sputnik! First Satellite
GAL114_150824_297.JPG: The Soviet Union stunned the world with the launch of Sputnik ("satellite") on October 4, 1057. A shiny basketball-size sphere containing radio transmitters, Sputnik announced the beginning of the Space Age.
Coming just weeks after the Soviets' successful test launch of the first intercontinental ballistic missile, Sputnik signaled the USSR's cabability in rocketry and their potential to dominate space.
GAL114_150824_299.JPG: Awake at Last!
GAL114_150824_305.JPG: Space Shuttle Spacesuit
Replica
GAL114_150824_309.JPG: Competitors in the Space Race
GAL114_150824_311.JPG: Von Braun
GAL114_150824_319.JPG: An Engineer's Tool
While a manager and public figure, Wernher von Braun stayed close to the work for engineering and design, using this slide rule for calculations.
GAL114_150824_322.JPG: First Astronauts
GAL114_150824_328.JPG: First Cosmonauts
GAL114_150824_331.JPG: The "Magician's Wand"
Sergei Korolev used this German-made slide rule to make quick calculations. To his colleagues, Korolev's slide rule was a "magician's wand." TOday's engineers and scientists uses pocket calculators and computers for this purpose.
GAL114_150824_333.JPG: Korolev
GAL114_150824_335.JPG: Vostok and Voskhod
GAL114_150824_346.JPG: A Cosmonaut's Identification:
Gagarin used these two ID cards. One identifies him as a cosmonaut in training (top) and the other as a member of the Communist party. He kept the cosmonaut card in his pocket during his historic flight.
GAL114_150824_352.JPG: Yuri Gagarin: First Man in Space
GAL114_150824_361.JPG: Glenn's Space Suit
GAL114_150824_369.JPG: An Engineer-Cosmonaut
GAL114_150824_373.JPG: Gagarin's Space Suit
GAL114_150824_383.JPG: Survival Gear
GAL114_150824_387.JPG: Feotistov's Flight Suit
GAL114_150824_398.JPG: Exit to Space
GAL114_150824_407.JPG: Soviet Moon Suit
GAL114_150824_420.JPG: The Moon Race Ends
GAL114_150824_422.JPG: Almost There
GAL114_150824_425.JPG: A Final Soviet Gambit:
When it became evident after the second N-1 rocket launch failure that the USSR could not send a man to the Moon ahead of the Americans, the Soviets attempted to obtain the first lunar rock and soil samples, sending a robot instead of a cosmonaut.
Luna 15, an automated sample return craft, was launched to the Moon two days before Apollo 11. It crashed-landed there shortly after US astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin first stepped onto the Moon. If the Luna 15 lander had not crashed, it would have returned to Earth with lunar soil just hours ahead of the Apollo 11 crew.
GAL114_150824_431.JPG: Apollo Lunar Suit
GAL114_150824_441.JPG: A Soviet Moonshot?
GAL114_150824_445.JPG: The Mishin Diaries
GAL114_150824_448.JPG: Zond: Trial Runs to the Moon
GAL114_150824_450.JPG: Lunokhod: Robotic Explorers on the Moon
GAL114_150824_455.JPG: To Land a Cosmonaut on the Moon
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Description of Subject Matter: Space Race
May 16, 1997 – March 27, 2022
This major exhibition traces the competition in space between the U.S. and the former Soviet Union from its origins in the 1950s to the recent international cooperation. Objects include a Soyuz TM-10 spacecraft, a Kosmos 1443 "Merkur" spacecraft, and a space suit made for the never-accomplished mission to land a Russian on the Moon. The exhibition is divided into the following sections:
* Military Origins of the Space Race examines the rivalry to develop rockets powerful enough to send thermo-nuclear warheads across the globe.
* Secret Eyes in Space reveals long-secret reconnaissance projects and includes the recently declassified "Corona" spy satellite camera.
* Racing to the Moon looks at the public accomplishments of both countries and includes the Soviet "Krechet" lunar space suit and the Apollo space suit.
* Exploring the Moon looks at the equipment developed to transmit pictures of the lunar surface to Earth, to perform chemical analyses of the soil, and to do other scientific experiments and includes an Apollo Lunar Landing Module.
* A Permanent Presence in Space looks at the efforts of both countries to establish permanent space stations for continued scientific discovery and the beginning of an era of cooperation in space.
* Fifty Years of Human Spaceflight examines how the Soviet Union and the United States raced to launch the first humans into space in 1961, during the Cold War.
* Repairing the Hubble Space Telescope features the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) and the Corrective Optics Space Telescope Axial Replacement (COSTAR), which corrected the optics of the telescope in 1993.
Objects include:
* Skylab Orbital Workshop
* German V-1 "buzz bomb" and V 2 missile
* Soviet and U.S. spacecraft and space suits
* Full-size test version of the Hubble Space Telescope
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2021_DC_SIAIR_Gall114A: DC -- Natl Air and Space Museum -- Gallery 114: (a) Space Race (7 photos from 2021)
2014_DC_SIAIR_Gall114A: DC -- Natl Air and Space Museum -- Gallery 114: (a) Space Race (6 photos from 2014)
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2009_DC_SIAIR_Gall114A: DC -- Natl Air and Space Museum -- Gallery 114: (a) Space Race (3 photos from 2009)
2008_DC_SIAIR_Gall114A: DC -- Natl Air and Space Museum -- Gallery 114: (a) Space Race (1 photo from 2008)
2007_DC_SIAIR_Gall114A: DC -- Natl Air and Space Museum -- Gallery 114: (a) Space Race (2 photos from 2007)
2005_DC_SIAIR_Gall114A: DC -- Natl Air and Space Museum -- Gallery 114: (a) Space Race (1 photo from 2005)
2003_DC_SIAIR_Gall114A: DC -- Natl Air and Space Museum -- Gallery 114: (a) Space Race (11 photos from 2003)
2002_DC_SIAIR_Gall114A: DC -- Natl Air and Space Museum -- Gallery 114: (a) Space Race (6 photos from 2002)
1998_DC_SIAIR_Gall114A: DC -- Natl Air and Space Museum -- Gallery 114: (a) Space Race (2 photos from 1998)
1997_DC_SIAIR_Gall114A: DC -- Natl Air and Space Museum -- Gallery 114: (a) Space Race (21 photos from 1997)
2015 photos: Equipment this year: I mostly used my Fuji XS-1 camera but, depending on the event, I also used a Nikon D7000.
I retired from the US Census Bureau in god-forsaken Suitland, Maryland on my 58th birthday in May. Yee ha!
Trips this year:
a quick trip to Florida.
two Civil War Trust conferences (Raleigh, NC and Richmond, VA), and
my 10th consecutive San Diego Comic-Con trip (including Los Angeles).
Ego Strokes: Carolyn Cerbin used a Kevin Costner photo in her USA Today article. Miss DC pictures were used a few times in the Washington Post.
Number of photos taken this year: just over 550,000.
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