NASA after the Shuttle: Begin in a Museum - Sigma Pi Sigma

Elegant Connections in PhysicsNASA after the Shuttle:Begin in a Museumby Dwight E. NeuenschwanderIn 2011 the NASA Space Shuttle program came to its scheduledend when Atlantis rolled to a stop on the tarmac at the KennedySpace Center on July 21, concluding its last visit to the InternationalSpace Station. Now that the surviving shuttles are retiringto museums, one may ask of NASA, “What comes next?” NASAhas been in the “What next?” position before.Really now, what is NASA all about?To some a “space program” means jobsand contracts. To some a space programmeans national defense and “maintainingsuperiority.” To some a space programmeans science and adventure andpushing the envelope of what’s possibleby seeing what human beings can actuallyaccomplish. NASA has, of course,meant all those things. As the shuttleorbiters begin new careers as museumartifacts to preserve memories of whatthey did, perhaps we should revisit othermuseum exhibits—and our memories—that tell the story of NASA’s legacy. Ifwe aspire to go beyond our predecessors,we would do well to remember and learnfrom them. By reviewing their motives,perhaps our own will be clarified. Byrevisiting their setbacks and triumphs,our own inspiration may be revitalized.14 Radiations Fall 2011

From Columbiad to RedstoneLong before any artificial satellites wereplaced into Earth orbit, the public’simagination was already primed forvisions of space travel to other worlds.Tales of such adventures as told in themid-19th century include From the Earthto the Moon (1865) by Jules Verne, astory about a capsule called the Columbiad,bearing three crew members thatlaunches to the moon by being firedfrom a cannon. In 1898 Konstantin Tsiolkovskyin Russia wrote The Investigationof Outer Space by Means of ReactionApparatus, which was published in 1903.In this nonfiction book Tsiolkovskycriticized the feasibility of Verne’s cannonlaunch scenario, calculating that thecannon barrel must be impossibly longand the shot would subject the crew tounsurvivable accelerations. However,An artist’s conception of how theSpace Shuttle Enterprise will lookin New York’s Intrepid Museum.NASA image.Tsiolkovsky credited Verne’s novel forinspiring him to think seriously aboutspace flight. Also in 1898, H.G. Wellspublished The War of the Worlds inwhich the earth suffers invasion bytechnologically advanced but ruthlessMartians. Receptivity to the novel’sthesis was aided by the misinterpretation(about 1877) of Martian landscapefeatures as “canals,” giving traction tothe notion that life might exist elsewherein the solar system. Wells followedWar of the Worlds with First Men in theMoon (1901). Quality science fiction,by extrapolating slightly beyond knownlimitations, stretches the mind towardnew possibilities that may lie just overthe horizon. For adventures in space exploration,the 20th century began withimagination and anticipation.On December 17, 1903, Wilburand Orville Wright carried out the firstsuccessful airplane flight at Kitty Hawk,NC. Aircraft technology moved aheadso quickly that in 1915 the NationalAdvisory Committee for Aeronautics(NACA) was founded to coordinate USfederally funded aviation research (theNACA would become NASA 43 yearslater). By 1914 Robert Goddard hadtaken out patents for liquid-fueled, solidfueled,and multistage rockets. His firstsuccessful liquid-fueled rocket flew onMarch 16, 1926, at Auburn, MA. Workingmostly alone and despite limitedfunds, Goddard developed gyroscopes,fuel pumps, steering vanes, and parachutes.His experiments were noticedabroad, especially in Germany.In 1923 Hermann Oberth publishedin Germany the influential The Rocketinto Interplanetary Space, a quantitativestudy of solar system navigationdynamics using rocket engines andgravity.[1] Soon afterward, in Breslau,Germany (now Wroclaw, Poland), arocket enthusiast’s society, the Verein fürRaumschiffahrt (VfR, German Societyfor Space Travel) was organized in arestaurant on June 5, 1927. The VfRpremise held that “out of small projects,large spacecraft can be developed whichthemselves can be ultimately developedby their pilots and sent to the stars.” In1930 18-year-old Wernher von Braun,who had been profoundly influenced byElegant Connections in PhysicsOberth’s book, joined the VfR. At anabandoned munitions dump near Berlin,VfR members soon had their rocketsstreaking to altitudes of 2 km.In 1933 Adolf Hitler came to powerand VfR assets were seized. Since rocketswere not included under the restrictionsof the Treaty of Versailles that endedWorld War I, German rocketry wasmade into a bureaucracy with von Braunappointed its leader. With military sponsorshiphe led the development of theV-2 rocket at Peenemünde on the Balticcoast. Fueled with alcohol and liquidoxygen, the V-2 produced 56,000 lb ofthrust and could lift a 1-ton payload toa height of 100 miles. Nearly 4000 V-2swere fired during World War II, butthey caused little damage in proportionto their cost. Near the war’s endvon Braun abandoned his headquartersat Peenemünde, retreated to the Bavarianmountains, stashed importantdocuments, and dispersed his team. Hesurrendered to the Americans and ledthem to 14 tons of technical papers and100 disassembled V-2s. Then he and 125colleagues and their families migratedto El Paso, TX, as part of the US Army’sOperation Paperclip. At Fort Bliss theArmy provided resources for the groupto resume designing rockets, and theyorganized anew under von Braun’s leadershipas the US Army Ordnance MissileCommand. The V-2s were taken to theArmy’s White Sands Proving Groundsnear Alamogordo, NM, and werelaunched there from 1946 to 1952. AtWhite Sands the V-2 payload bays weremade available for research projects.A V-2 Upper Atmosphere Rocket andResearch Panel with representatives fromthe military, universities, and industryprovided access to a wide spectrum oftalent. With these resources, advances intracking, timing, telemetry, communications,safety, aborting flights, instrumentation,and data recovery all movedquickly ahead. In April 1948 the panelchanged its name to the Rocket and SatelliteResearch Panel. In June 1950 vonBraun’s group relocated to Huntsville,AL, to occupy the vacated RedstoneArsenal facility and be near the AtlanticMissile Range at Cape Canaveral, FL,where the next generation of rocketsFall 2011 Radiations 15

Elegant Connections in Physicswould be launched. In Huntsville theyproduced V-2 successors, beginning withthe namesake Redstone rocket, producing78,000 lb of thrust, capable of carryinga 3-ton payload on 200-mile ballisticflights. When the last V-2 was launchedin 1952, an American space programwas taking root.Looming in the background of thesedevelopments were the new hydrogenbombs, which had first been tested onNovember 2, 1952. That first one, theUSA’s “Mike” shot, used liquid hydrogenas fuel in a device far too large to be carriedanywhere. This round of Americansuperiority was short-lived, because theSoviets detonated their own hydrogenbomb on August 12, 1953. On March1, 1954, the compact lithium-deuteride“dry” design was successfully detonatedin the Castle Bravo test on the MarshallIslands. By 1956 the Mark 17 hydrogenbomb was in production, which couldbe carried by the B-36 bomber. But arocket capable of placing a satellite intoorbit could deliver a nuclear weaponfrom Moscow to Washington, DC, inabout half an hour, beating the flighttime of any bomber. By the end of the1950s several fleets of large rocketswere available, including the Redstone,Vanguard, Thor, and Atlas vehicles. TheRedstone was created by von Braun forthe Army, the Vanguard was a productof the Naval Research Laboratory, andthe Thor and Atlas came from the AirForce.16 Radiations Fall 2011Investing in ImaginationAcross the land were the taxpayers who,in a free society, would have to give atleast implicit consent to such publiclyfunded efforts. That required vision.Popular culture can be a good indicatorof the state of public imaginationand vision. With the coming of cinemaand broadcast technologies, the classicscience fiction stories were quicklyadapted to movies, radio, and television,famously including the Orson Wellsradio broadcast on October 30, 1938, ofan adaption of War of the Worlds. Spacetravel and aliens inspired televisionprograms from the beginning of the medium,as they still do today. Some charactersand story lines appeared earlierin print, such as the Buck Rogers in the25th Century comic strip that began in1929, followed by Flash Gordon in 1934.Both were adapted to a series of televisionprograms: Buck Rogers aired fromApril 1950 to January 1951, and theFlash Gordon series ran from October1954 to April 1955. Other space fictiontelevision programs from the early 1950sincluded Space Patrol and Tom Corbett,Space Cadet. It is interesting that whilethese shows were intended for children,they also attracted a following amongadults. Perhaps the innate childhoodcuriosity and fascination with the world,so necessary for the spirit of science, wasreignited in the parents.Flash Gordon’s spaceship, the SkyFlash, resembled a stylized V-2 rocket.By today’s standards the visual effectsseem cheesy; for example, when theSky Flash took off, little puffs of smokecame out the back of what was clearlya model suspended with fine wires. Butkids my age watching at the time didnot care about such production trivia;we were used to playing with toy modelsourselves, and our imaginations did therest. So we had a good time and cut thespecial effects technicians some slackthat would not be tolerated today, whencomputer-generated realistic images aretaken for granted.I don’t know what this says abouthuman nature, but the story lines ofthese programs were mostly aboutconflicts between Good Guy heroesand Bad Guy villains. Although FlashGordon and Tom Corbett used ray gunsinstead of six-shooters, the story lineswere similar to those of The Lone Rangeror Zorro; merely the settings were different.However, for young viewers likeme, the setting was the point. Good orbad, the aliens from other worlds wereinteresting because they were from otherworlds. Such a conception would havebeen inconceivable to our counterpartsin, say, the 14th century. Ah, this bringsback a flood of memories . . .. . . It’s the mid-1950s. We can jointhe Space Patrol Club and mail-order aSpace Patrol helmet with 25 cents anda cereal box top. . . . So there we are,sporting our Space Patrol helmets andbrandishing our Buck Rogers Death Raypistols, swinging our legs from chrome andvinyl kitchen chairs while watching theantics of space heroes and villains on littleblack-and-white television screens. But ourimaginations soar off this planet and setout across the universe. . . .In the long view, perhaps Jules Verneand Flash Gordon had roles just asnecessary for the exploration of space inthe real world as were the roles of RobertGoddard, Wernher von Braun, and NeilArmstrong.Allowing for the goals and limitationsof the medium, the Tom Corbett,Space Cadet show may have been the

Elegant Connections in Physicsmore scientifically realistic, as its producersolicited the services of scienceadvisors. Although to travel throughthe asteroid belt was to risk falling preyto space pirates who lingered there, theproducers made Mars into a desert andVenus into a tropical jungle. They wereright about Mars, and because Venus isa cloud-wrapped planet about the size ofEarth and lies just within the sun’s lifezone, one could still suppose in the early1950s that Venus might possibly be aglobal Costa Rica. Of course, the Sovietand American probes that flew by orlanded on Venus in the 1960s showed itssurface to be hot enough to melt lead. . . .. . . We were oh so disappointed—ourdreams of hacking through a Venus jungleunderstory while watching out for giantscreeching pterodactyls swooping down overour heads had to be set aside, replaced bya planet on which the greenhouse effectexperiment had already been done to theextreme! . . .Sputnik and ExplorerIt is said that one evening in 1950, duringa gathering in the home of JamesVan Allen, the conversation noted anupcoming maximum in solar activity,turned to opportunities offered byrecent developments in computer androcket technologies, and recalled theInternational Polar Years of 1888 and1932. Thus was hatched the idea toorganize an International GeophysicalYear (IGY) to run from July 1957through December 1958. An internationalconsortium of scientific societiesagreed, and planning began. Americanparticipation was charged to a USNational Committee formed in March1953, which in turned organized panelsof technical experts to pursue projectsin cosmic rays, auroras, geomagnetism,glaciology, gravity, ionosphere physics,meteorology, oceanography, seismology,solar activity, and rocketry. Both theUS and Soviet governments aimed toplace satellites in orbit during the IGY.The US government was represented byNACA participation on the US NationalCommittee. Official impetus for a USsatellite program accelerated in 1954with a joint Army-Navy proposal calledProject Orbiter. The following year theEisenhower administration opted forthe alternative Navy Project Vanguardinstead. In 1956 the Upper AtmosphereRocket and Satellite Research Panelorganized a symposium at the Universityof Michigan titled “The ScientificUses of Earth Satellites,” chaired by VanAllen. The US push was on for satellitesin space.Then the world woke up on October4, 1957, to the news that the SovietUnion had done it first by successfullyplacing the 184-lb Sputnik I intoEarth orbit. The iconic beep-beep-beepemitted by the shiny sphere trailing itsfour antenna wires became an indeliblememory to everyone who was aware ofit at the time. The Soviet achievementwas all the more remarkable given thatthe USSR had been laid waste duringWorld War II, which left its major citiesin ruins and some 25 million citizensdead. Despite so recent a calamity onso large a scale, Sputnik 1 demonstratedthat the technological prowess of theSoviet Union was not to be underestimated.Furthermore, Sputnik 2 quicklyfollowed, launched on November 3, amonth after its predecessor. Significantly,Sputnik 2 carried the world’s first passengerin orbit, a female terrier namedLaika. Throughout the remainder of1957 the USSR could boast two satellitesin orbit while the United States hadnone. The first US attempt to launch asatellite, on December 6, 1957, endedignominiously when its Vanguard rocketsettled back onto the launch pad andexploded after reaching a height of 4 ft.In the environment of the ColdWar, these events set off alarm bells inthe establishments of US government,industry, and education. One could arguethat Sputnik was the best thing thatcould have happened not only to the USspace program, but to technology andscience education as well. For example,on September 2, 1958, the National DefenseEducation Act, which emphasizedmathematics and science education, wassigned into law.With the awareness that the SovietUnion could now exploit rocket technologyfor military use, in February 1958LEFTV-2 launch, September 29, 1949.Naval Research Laboratory photo.CENTERThe National Air and SpaceMuseum’s replica of Sputnik 1.USAF photo.RIGHTA full-scale model of Explorer 1,held by (left to right) JPL’s DirectorWilliam Pickering, James Van Allen,and Wernher von Braun, ca. January1958. JPL/NASA photo.Fall 2011 Radiations 17

Elegant Connections in Physicsthe Advanced Research Projects Agency(ARPA) was formed, with an office inthe Pentagon, to coordinate US civilianand military efforts, make sure thatUS military technology would be moresophisticated than the technology of itspotential enemies, and formulate projectsintended to expand technology beyondimmediate military requirements.However, it must also be said that, incontrast to all the official suspicion, afterVan Allen attended a cosmic ray meetingwith Soviet scientists in 1959 he wrote,“At this conference, there were manydiffering views and differing methods ofattack, but the problems were commonones to all of us and a unity of basicpurpose was everywhere evident.”There was more at stake swirlingaround Sputnik than scoring the technicaladvantage du jour during the ColdWar. National prestige was an asset tobe used as collateral for influence in theworld marketplace of ideas. Politiciansand pundits spoke of the two Cold Waradversaries, who faced each other likeRobert Oppenheimer’s two scorpionsin a bottle,[2] as “the West” with itsNorth Atlantic Treaty Organization,and the “Soviet Bloc” with its WarsawPact. These superpower actors playedto an audience consisting of the rest ofthe world, especially the “unaligned”nations, then called the “Third World.”Most Third World countries were formercolonies of the West, and with over50 million people having just perishedin a global war fought over principlesof self-determination, the wheels ofcolonialism were beginning to fall off. Inthis new paradigm many Third Worldnations were struggling to recover theirABOVEThe X-15 rocket plane. USAF photo.18 Radiations Fall 2011RIGHTWernher von Braun with models of thevarious Saturn rockets, Marshall SpaceFlight Center, May 1964, NASA photo.identities while trying to build theirsocieties and economies. The West andthe Soviet Bloc were locked in a strugglefor their allegiance—and access to theirresources would be nice, too. When theleader of the Cuban revolution, FidelCastro, aligned himself with the Sovietsin January 1959, the point was sharplyemphasized.[3] As a consequence of policiesguided by a “domino” hypothesis,that year also saw the first US casualtiesin the former French colony of Vietnam.For the sake of international public relations,the USA had to get a satellite intoorbit, and do it fast.Immediately after Sputnik the Army-Navy Project Orbiter program was revivedand given new life as the Explorerprogram. The Army Ballistic MissileAgency, together with the Jet PropulsionLaboratory, assembled in 84 days theExplorer 1 satellite and launch vehicle,the latter a Redstone modified underthe supervision of von Braun. Explorer 1was successfully launched into orbit onJanuary 31, 1958. It weighed 31 poundsand was launched by a rocket weighing32 tons.Foreshadowing the research capabilitiesof satellites and space probesto come, the Explorer satellites carriedinstruments for studying cosmic rays.They bore the fingerprints of James VanAllen, who started studying cosmic raysas an undergraduate. During WWIIhe helped develop the proximity fuzeat the Johns Hopkins Applied PhysicsResearch Lab [4] and in 1951 becamechair of the physics department at theUniversity of Iowa. Van Allen and hisstudents developed rockets that werefired from high-altitude balloons, acombination called a “rockoon.” Rockoonslaunched from Newfoundland in1953 found the first hints of the highaltitudebelts of charged particles thatwould later bear Van Allen’s name. Todetect micrometeorites and cosmic rays,the slender cylindrical Explorer satellitecarried counters and electronics built byVan Allen’s group. Explorer 1 detecteda cosmic ray count much lower thanexpected. Van Allen hypothesized thatthe detectors were saturated because thesatellite passed through a belt of chargedparticles trapped by the earth’s magneticfield. These belts, now called the VanAllen Belts, were confirmed by Explorer3 in March 1958.From Aeronautics to SpaceIn the 1950s the distinction betweenairplanes and spacecraft was becomingblurred. One of NACA’s more dramaticsuccesses, completed in cooperation withthe Army Air Corps, was the developmentof the X-1 rocket plane, the firstaircraft to “break the sound barrier.”After much testing this barrier was brokenon October 14, 1947, when ChuckYeager and Glamorous Glennis reachedMach 1.06. The X-1 led to proposalsby 1954 for rocket engine and airframedesigns that became the X-15, on whichconstruction began in 1956.The X-15 rocket plane bridged thetransition from airplanes to spacecraft.The X-15 program conducted flight testsfrom June 1959 to October 1967. Therocket plane was released from a B-52at an altitude of 8 miles and its rocketwould ignite, shooting it to altitudesknocking on the door of suborbitalflight. After rocketing to above essentiallyall the atmosphere, the X-15 glidedto a landing on the earth. Several of itspilots were recognized with astronautwings on their uniforms, a distinctionearned only by those who reachedaltitudes greater than 100 km. Amongthese were the future Apollo 11 commanderNeil Armstrong and a future

Elegant Connections in PhysicsSpace Shuttle pilot Joe Engle. The X-15still holds the official speed recordfor a rocket-powered aircraft (Mach6.72, set by Joe Knight on October 3,1967), and on October 22, 1963, it setan altitude record for rocket-poweredaircraft (107.96 km by Joe Walker) thatstood until October 4, 2007, whenSpaceShipOne piloted by Mike Melvillreached 111.996 km.. . . There was a sixth-grade textbook(now lost), a collection of assorted readingsthat included an essay by an X-15pilot. . . . Within its pages I see myselfstrapped into the X-15 cockpit, black skyabove, blue Earth curving away 70 milesbelow, pressed back into the seat by therocket’s blazing acceleration, going fasterand faster. . . . The author explained whyI do not hear the rocket’s radiated roaras I outrace the sound waves; all I hearfrom the X-15 itself are the sounds fromthe machine’s operation, transmitted tome through the airframe. . . . Back onthe ground, looking into a clear blue sky Iimagine the X-15 up there out of sight. . . .To this day, whenever I find myself in theNational Air and Space Museum, amidthe many jaw-dropping storied aircraftand spacecraft residing there, I have tovisit one that seems a personal friend,X-15-1, serial number 56-6670. It was thefirst of the three X-15s built, and wheneverI see it that sixth-grade kid lives again inmy mind, outracing sound on the edge ofspace, looking for a ride to the moon. . . .By the time the X-15 came along, therole of “aeronautics” in national policyclearly needed to include “space” asLEFTHam after his Mercury flight, aboard therecovery ship USS Donner and shakinghands with the ship’s commander,January 31, 1961. NASA photo.well. Thus was the National Aeronauticsand Space Administration formedon October 1, 1958, as the successor toNACA. NASA inherited a deep benchwith which to field a space program,including the fleet of available rocketsand the oncoming X-15, in addition tomore exotic proposals regarding nuclearpropulsion that required long-termdecisions to be made.[5] The programto develop what became the largestboosters of all was initiated by ARPA inthe summer of 1958 under the auspicesof the Department of Defense. The outcomewas the Saturn family of rockets,which culminated with the mighty SaturnV, the largest of von Braun’s designs.The Saturn V first stage consumed28,000 lb of liquid oxygen and keroseneper second and produced 7.5 million lbof thrust. Management of the Saturnprogram shifted to NASA in 1959. OnJuly 1, 1960, von Braun’s operation inHuntsville was officially transferred toNASA and became the George C. MarshallSpace Flight Center.As the new agency prepared forlaunches carrying astronauts, a fleet ofsatellites was launched with missions toplanet Earth. NASA’s first meteorologicalsatellite, Trios 1, lifted off its launchpad on April 1, 1960. Communicationsatellites went aloft about the same time,beginning with Echo 1 the following August12. These giant metallic balloons(100 ft diameter) were inflated in orbit,where radio signals were reflected offthem. . . .In that dawn of humanity’s tentativesteps into space, I am a second graderplaying outside after dark and see a brightgleaming “star” moving fast from horizonto horizon. In response to my shouts of“Come look, a satellite!” everyone dashesout of the house to gaze at this awesomesight. We realize that, in the long history ofthe world, no one has ever seen this wonderbefore, and we are grateful to be present aswitnesses. . . . Those were stirring times,and remain vivid memories. To this day,every time I see a satellite sweeping acrossthe sky I recall the excitement of the earlypost-Sputnik era. Although now we caneasily track satellites on a website’s smallscreen,[6] seeing the real thing streak acrossthe wide sky with my own eyes still offers adeeply satisfying moment.America’s first astronaut was anaffable chimpanzee named Ham, whoflew in a Mercury capsule launched bya Redstone rocket on January 31, 1961.Ham had been trained to pull levers inresponse to sounds and flashing lightsto gauge whether one could maintainmental alertness in space flight. Hamperformed his tasks well, but he hadquite a ride. The rocket’s angle of ascentwas one degree too steep, the flight hadto be aborted, and Ham flew higher (155mi), faster (5000 mph), and experiencedgreater acceleration than planned.Furthermore, when the capsule overshotits intended Atlantic Ocean landing siteby 130 miles, it began to sink. But arescue crew reached Ham in time, andhe emerged from the capsule in goodhumor, accepting his bonus of an appleand an orange. Although Ham’s flightended happily,[7] NASA saw that it hadsome glitches to fix before sending moreastronauts aloft, but Ham’s adventureclearly demonstrated that human spaceflight was within reach.The Challenge to Imagine BigOn April 12, 1961, the Soviet spaceprogram scored another touchdownwhen cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin becamethe first human being to go into “outerspace.” His Vostok spacecraft made a106-minute orbit around the earth. Thisdisplay of Soviet competence stood instark contrast to another event on theground that played out that same week,when an invasion of Cuba, carried outby CIA-trained Cuban exiles with theintention of overthrowing the Castroregime, ended in disaster at the Bay ofPigs. April 1961 was not a good monthfor the new Kennedy administration.However, US fortunes improvedthe next month, when on May 5 AlanShepard became America’s first hu-Fall 2011 Radiations 19

Elegant Connections in PhysicsApollo 8 astronauts hold what may be themost unusual press conference of all time.As they orbit the moon 70 miles above itscratered surface, they read aloud verses1–10 from the first chapter of the Book ofGenesis, King James Version. As we in ourliving rooms hear the astronauts read theancient text in Elizabethan English, ourtelevision screens show the face of the fullmoon through a telescope, and we knowthe astronauts are in our field of view. . . .Into that moment is compressed severalthousand years of human yearning foradventure and meaning. . . .The following summer, on June 16,1969, began the climax of the decadewith the launch of Apollo 11. Threedays later, as Michael Collins orbited themoon in the command module Columbia,Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrindrove the Eagle LM to the lunar surface.They landed with 25 seconds of fuelremaining in the LM’s descent stage,and we heard “Tranquility Base here,the Eagle has landed.” Anyone who sawTOP LEFTEarth as seen in a live television broadcastfrom Apollo 8, altitude 176,533 miles,December 23, 1968. NASA photo.BOTTOM LEFTEarthrise from lunar orbit, Apollo 8,December 24, 1968. NASA photo.TOP RIGHTLaunch of Apollo 11, July 16, 1969. NASA photo.MIDDLE RIGHTNeil Armstrong descending the lunar moduleladder, as seen by television viewers onEarth, July 20, 1969. NASA photo.BOTTOM RIGHTBuzz Aldrin on the moon, December 20, 1969.Photo by Neil Armstrong. NASA photo.22 Radiations Fall 2011

Elegant Connections in Physicsit will never forget. . . .We watched the clock throughout thatSunday, determined to be in front of atelevision set at the time announced for theastronauts to emerge from the LM. Thatafternoon, watching in the basement ofmy house with friends, and by extension,watching with a fifth of the world’s population,we beheld the ghostly black-andwhiteimage of Neil Armstrong descendingthe ladder in the shadow of the LM. Hepaused on the spacecraft’s pod and said“I’m going to step off the LM now. . . .”As Neil Armstrong took the step thatno one had ever taken before, his wordswere elegant in their simplicity: “That’sone small step for a man, one giant leapfor mankind.” Eight years had elapsedsince President Kennedy’s challenge. Ittook over 20 billion 1960s dollars spreadover that decade, and, as Armstrongreminded everyone later, a “third of amillion people” to “manage it.”[11] Butthe accomplishments in space duringthose years will be remembered long aftertheir costs and the Cold War motivesthat accelerated them have been buriedand forgotten.Twenty-four Apollo astronautsorbited the moon, and twelve walkedon its surface. So far they are the onlyhuman beings to leave low-Earth orbitand see with their own eyes the moon upclose and Earth from afar. The ten astronautswho walked on the moon afterApollo 11 stayed longer and went fartherand collected more data than Armstrongand Aldrin, but even during the flightof Apollo 12, many people from thecountry who sent them did not evenbother to look up. We had been there,done that. Apollo 13 captured muchinterest because it came so close to endingin tragedy. The remaining Apolloflights were enormously successful.The last moon mission was Apollo 17in December 1972. By then the Nixonadministration had decided to cancelApollos 18, 19, and 20 to save money,given the diminished public interest.I suppose it is a property of humannature that the amazing, when repeated,becomes ordinary. Gus Grissom, beforehis Mercury flight of July 21, 1961, saidafter Alan Shepard’s flight, “There won’tbe this much fuss the next time. Onceyou’ve seen one, you’ve seen ‘em all.”[12]The moon landings presented NASAwith a hard act to follow. One wonderedwhat NASA would do next. Usingleftover Apollo hardware, we soon hadSkylab (1973–1979), where a SaturnIVB stage was modified into an orbitinglaboratory. Then came Apollo-Soyuz(July 1975), an encouraging gesture ofUS/USSR cooperation that offered somekind of benediction to the Cold WarSpace Race, while showing what mighthave been, and can be, for internationalcooperation. Meanwhile, of course,NASA engineers and managers had beenlooking ahead.The cost of expendable boosters andmodules makes unsustainable the practiceof depending on them for routineaccess to space. For commuting to workin orbit, a reusable vehicle would be essential.Toward that end, the next longtermprogram was the Space Shuttle.The Space ShuttleThe shuttle program started in the late1960s. Overshadowed by the anticipatedlunar landings, it received little attentionuntil the mid-1970s. As the Apollomissions became routinely successfuland the public’s enthusiasm cooled forwatching astronauts pick up rocks, bythe early 1970s the public’s gaze shiftedto concerns closer to home. With anunpopular war dragging on in Vietnam,amid the push for civil rights andconcerns about poverty, pollution, anda looming energy crisis, the Americanpublic began asking what they weregetting for their money with yet anothervisit to the moon. Even though NASA’sbudget was a small fraction of thefederal budget, should the expenditureof NASA’s billions be directed to solvingproblems here on Earth? Unlike theMercury, Gemini, and Apollo spacecraft,each shuttle could be reused,which looked like a better sale to a skepticalpublic. The construction of the firstorbiter, the Columbia, began in 1974.In September 1976 the public got a firstlook at it. The Columbia and all othershuttles had their origins in the X-1,X-15, and X-20 rocket planes that weredeveloped from the late 1940s throughthe 1960s.Before the X-15 made its first flightin 1959, the X-20 spaceplane was alreadyin the works. Also called the Dyna-Soarfor “dynamic soaring,” the X-20 wasthe focus of an Air Force program todevelop a piloted delta-wing spaceplanethat could travel as high and as fast asan intercontinental ballistic missile,going into suborbital flight if necessary,extending its range by skipping off theupper atmosphere. It would return toa landing strip in an unpowered glide.Due to its high cost and questionableusefulness, the X-20 program wascanceled in December 1963 before a firstprototype was built. However, in theearly 1970s NASA gave the X-20 drawingsnew life as the Space Shuttle. Bothcraft were delta-winged vehicles boostedinto orbit by large rockets, would glideback to Earth and land on a runway likean airplane, and do it all over again.The shuttle program was formallyinitiated on January 5, 1972, with anannouncement from President Nixon.NASA originally envisioned a launchschedule that would approach onelaunch per week. Compromises wereeventually made from a fully reusabledesign to one that featured reusableorbiters and solid rocket boosters but anexpendable liquid fuel tank. Columbia’sfirst flight occurred on April 12, 1981,the 20th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’sfirst orbital flight.The shuttle’s utility in puttingsatellites and probes into orbit, suchas the Galileo mission to Jupiter andthe Hubble Space Telescope, are mattersof record and pride. Shuttles flew 135missions. The tragedies on two of them,with the losses of the crews aboard Challengerand Columbia, sadly remindedus yet again of how the high velocities,extreme temperatures and pressures, andthe firepower on which one sits makethe exploration of space so dangerous anadventure.The shuttles made possible theAmerican contribution to the constructionof the International Space StationFall 2011 Radiations 23

Elegant Connections in PhysicsABOVEArtist rendering of the X-20 approaching alanding at Edwards Air Force Base. Djorampublic domain image.TOP RIGHTSpace Shuttle launch. NASA photo.BOTTOM RIGHTStage 1 of the Apollo 18 Saturn V booster,with author and students, Johnson SpaceCenter, Houston Texas, November 7, 1992.Author photo.(ISS), the largest manmade structureplaced in orbit to date.It is early nighttime in central Oklahoma,and the ISS and shuttle are to bevisible together from here at about 8 pm.Here they come!—like two Venuses racingacross the sky, sweeping so swiftly fromsouthwest to northeast. From the anglesubtended between them, and assuming atypical orbit altitude, I estimate the shuttleto be trailing the ISS by some 600 miles; aday’s drive for us, but which they cover inseconds. . . .With the ISS construction nowfinished, the Space Shuttle program hasserved its purpose. The last shuttle tofly was Atlantis, launched July 8, 2011.Upon its return on July 21, all the survivingshuttles—Atlantis, Discovery, andEndeavor, along with the Enterprise thatwas used in early gliding tests—are nowmaking their ways to places of honoredretirement in distinguished museums.What’s Next?As we asked following Apollo, now wemay ask, after STS-135, “What’s next?”During a 1989 CBS television documentarythat celebrated the 20th anniversaryof Apollo 11, in a closing commentaryDan Rather recalled how in the 1960sthe American people took a great riskand had a great adventure. Today, hesaid, there is less adventure.[13] Sharedadventure can pull a society togetherfor a time, and manned missions lookgreat on television. Missions with hu-24 Radiations Fall 2011

Elegant Connections in Physicsman crews are sometimes necessary, asdemonstrated in shuttle flights to servicethe Hubble Space Telescope. But perhapswe glean more science per dollar withrobotic probes. Soon after the flightsof Sputnik and Explorer and throughthe present moment, such probes havefanned out across the solar system.Among the pantheon of machines thathave carried the work of our hands toother worlds and returned to us knowledge,we recite a distinguished sampling:Ranger 7, lunar probe (1964);the Soviet Venera 3 Venus lander (1965);Mariner 9 Mars orbiter (1971);the Soviet Mars 3 lander (1971);Mariner 10 flyby of Venus and Mercury(1973);Pioneer 10, the first probe to negotiatethe asteroid belt and then fly by Jupiter(1973, last contact 2003);Pioneer 11 flybys of Jupiter and Saturnin 1973 (last contact 1995);Voyager 1, launched in 1977, flyby ofJupiter (1979) and Saturn (1980), stilltransmitting data back to Earth, nownear the heliosphere and heading out ofthe solar system;Voyager 2, zoomed past Jupiter (1979),Saturn (1980), Uranus (1986), and Neptune(1989), still transmitting, and alsoheading out of the solar system;the European Space Agency’s Giotto thatflew by Halley’s Comet (1986);Galileo, launched 1989, flybys of Venus,Earth, asteroids, orbited Jupiter (1995);Magellan orbiter that radar-mapped thesurface of Venus (1989);Mars Pathfinder and its rover Sojourner(1997);the Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity(active 2004–2010);NEAR Shoemaker, that orbited andtouched down on an asteroid (2001);Cassini, launched in 1994, began orbitingSaturn in 2004, detaching Huygensin 2005 that landed on the Saturn moonTitan . . .In a 2005 essay, columnist CharlesKrauthammer wrote that we humanbeings tend to remember our commonhumanity “in sorrow and glory.”He recalled Apollo 8 and Apollo 11 asexamples of the glory, and the 2005Pacific tsunami to illustrate the sorrow.Krauthammer wrote, “Just two daysbefore the tsunami, the Cassini spacecraftorbiting Saturn received instructionsfrom this frail little species threeplanetary orbits away, and proceeded todetach and launch its Huygens probe tofly suicidally down to the giant moonTitan—measuring, sensing, learning,and teaching through its final descent.All for one purpose: to satisfy the hungerfor knowledge of a species three-quartersof a billion miles away. Huygens carriedno passengers, only the productof thousands of years of accumulatedknowledge . . . Even as Earth is tossingus about like toys, our own little proxies,a satellite and a probe, dare disturbDEDICATIONTo the astronauts and cosmonauts who lost their lives in the line of duty.Valentin Bondarenko, low-pressure training, March 23, 1961Theodore Freeman, T-38, October 31, 1964Charles Bassey and Elliot See, T-38, February 28, 1966Roger Chaffee, Gus Grissom, and Ed White, Apollo 1, January 27, 1967Vladimir Komarov, Soyuz 1, April 24, 1967Clifton William, T-38, 5 October 5, 1967Robert Lawrence, F-104 Starfighter, December 8, 1967Yuri Gagarin, Soyuz 3, March 27, 1968Georgi Dobrovolski, Viktor Patsayev, and Vladisev Volkov,Soyuz 11, June 30, 1971Michael J. Adams, X-15-3, November 15, 1976Gergory Jarvis, Christa McAuliffe, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka,Judith Resnick, Dick Scobee, and Michael J. Smith,STS-51, Challenger, January 28, 1986Sergei Vozovikov, water rescue training, July 11, 1993Michael P. Anderson, David M. Brown, Laurel Clark, Kalpana Chawla,Rick D. Husband, William C. McCool, and Ilan Ramon,STS-107, Columbia, February 1, 2003Dogs: Laika, Sputnik 2, November 3, 1957;Pchyolka and Mushka, Sputnik 3, December 1, 1960Monkeys: Albert, V-2, June 11, 1948; Albert II, V-2, June 14, 1949; AlbertIII, V-2, September 16, 1949; Albert IV, V-2, December 8, 1949; Albert V,Aerobee, April 18, 1951; Yorik, Aerobee, September 20, 1951; Gordo, JupiterAM-13, December 13, 1958; Goliath, Atlas, November 10, 1961; Scatback,lost at sea, December 20, 1961; Bonny, Biosatellite 3, July 9, 1969; Multik,Bion 11, January 8, 1997Saturn and Titan. What a piece of workis man!”[14]With the end of the shuttle program,will we be content to stay in low-Earthorbit for our time? Endings can be sad,but the new beginnings they make possiblecan be good. As before, we findthat NASA engineers and planners havebeen anticipating this day. The plannedsuccessor to the shuttle program is ProjectConstellation, using concepts anddesigns adapted from both the Apolloand Space Shuttle programs. Constellationfeatures the Ares I and Ares Vlaunch boosters. Ares I, using solid-fuelrockets like those that boosted the shuttles,would carry astronaut crews intolow-Earth orbit aboard the new Orionmodule, the descendant of the Apollocontinued on page 29Fall 2011 Radiations 25

NASA after the shuttle...continued from page 25capsules. The heavier Ares V, a liquidfueledrocket similar to Saturn boosters,would boost such hardware as the Altairlander, a descendant of the LM, and theEarth Departure Stage (EDS) for sendingthe Orion and Altair to the moon orbeyond. Once placed into Earth orbit,the Orion, EDS, and Altair would dockand be reconfigured for missions abroad.NASA planners envision missions to themoon, Mars, and the asteroids.Meanwhile, adventurers with privatefunding sources are taking the initiative,as we saw in the impressive flights ofSpaceShipOne. In the long view, a diversityof approaches will be good for spaceexploration. SpaceShipOne now occupiesits rightful place in the Milestones ofFlight gallery of the National Air andSpace Museum, sharing this honoredspace with Charles Lindberg’s Spiritof St. Louis, the Bell X-1 GlamorousGlynnis, John Glenn’s Mercury capsuleFriendship 7, Gemini IV, the X-15-1rocket plane, early Goddard rockets, thecenterpiece Apollo 11 capsule Columbia,and other priceless artifacts from anastonishing history.[15]Not surprisingly, the Constellationprogram has become a political football,amid concerns about economic recessiongone on too long and federal budgetdeficits grown too large, worries similarto those that existed in the waning daysof Apollo. What next?—that appears tostill be an open question. When he challengedthe nation in 1961 to venture intospace, President Kennedy said,“It is a most important decision that wemust make as a nation. But . . . no onecan predict with certainty what the ultimatemeaning will be of mastery of space.. . . We go into space because whatevermankind must undertake, free men mustfully share.”A necessary ingredient for choosingwisely seems to be an ample supplyof imagination that resides not only inthe brains of NASA planners, but morefundamentally in the minds and heartsof schoolchildren, their parents, andindeed all citizens. For imagination tobe fruitful it must have the freedomto roam across the universe. The spaceprogram was about far more than NeilArmstrong stepping onto the moon. Itwas also about a second grader searchingthe night sky with wonder, and shouting“Come look!”“All one can really leave one’s children iswhat’s inside their heads.Education, in other words, and not earthlypossessions, is the ultimate legacy,the only thing that cannot be taken away.”—Wernher von Braun rAcknowledgmentsThanks to Thomas Olsen for makingsuggestions on a preliminary draft of themanuscript.BibliographyE.J. DeWaard and N. DeWaard, History of NASA(Exter Books, New York, 1984).R. Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb (Simonand Schuster, New York, NY, 1986).Elizabeth Montalanio, “NASA Plans Future Missionsas Shuttle Era Ends,” Information Week, July21, 2011, URL:[http://www.informationweek.com/news/government/leadership/231002338].H.H. Hickman, Jr., Rocket Boys: A Memoir (DelacortePress, New York, 1998).[http://www.nasa.gov/][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From-the_Earth_to_the_Moon][http://en.wikepedia.org/wiki/The_First_Men_in_the_Moon][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Worlds][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buck_Rogers][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_Gordon_(1954_TV_Series)][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Patrol_(1950_TV_series)][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Corbett,_Space_Cadet][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Oberth][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Rocket_Society][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_X-1][http://www.nationalacademies.org/history/igy/ ][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki//James_Van_Allen][http://history.nasa.gov/sputnik/expinfo.html][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sputnik_1][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sputnik_2][http://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Ready-Reference/JFK-Speeches/Special-Message-to-the-Congress-on-Urgent-National-Needs-May-25-1961.aspx][http://www.aerospaceweb.org/aircraft/research/x15/][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-15]http://www.boeing.com/history/boeing/dynasoar.html][http://www.boeing.com/history/mdc/gemini.htm][http://en/Wikipedia/org/wiki/Apollo_program][ http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/main/index.html][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Program][http://www.nasa.gov/missions/science/f-satellites.html][http://www.nasa.gov/missions/solarsystem/bush_vision.html][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_policy_of_the_Barack_Obama_administration][http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constellation_program][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Rover][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NERVA][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laika][http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/january/31/newsid_4693000/4693174.stm][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enos_(chimpanzee)][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spaceflightrelated_accidents_and_incidents][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkeys_in_space]Notes[1] H. Oberth, The Rocket into Interplanetary Space(R. Oldenbourg, Munich and Berlin, 1923).[2] R. Rhodes, Arsenals of Folly: The Making of theNuclear Arms Race (Vintage Books, New York,2008), p. 308.[3] Cuba had been a territory of Spain (1492-1898)and occupied by the US (1899-1902).[4] For more on the proximity fuze, see V.S. Alpher,“Ralph Asher Alpher—Before the Big Bang,”Radiations 14(1), Spring 2008, pp. 5–10.[5] G. Dyson, Project Orion (Henry Hold and Co.,New York, 2002); F. Dyson, Disturbing the Universe(Basic Books, New York, 1979), Ch. 10.[6] For satellite tracking in real time, see www.n2yo.com/.[7] Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for thepioneering dogs and monkeys who were put aboardrockets from the days of the White Sands V-2s.[8] The chimpanzee Enos, aboard a Mercurycapsule, previously orbited the earth twice onNovember 29, 1961.[9] Such a principle we might consider applyingto public education, empowering the teachersthemselves and respecting their creativity, insteadof imposing on them heavy-handed top-down approaches.Just a thought.[10] E. John and N. DeWaard, p. 55.[11] Neil Armstrong interview of 1979 recorded forthe 10th anniversary of Apollo 11 and replayed onThe Moon Above, the Earth Below, a CBS documentaryfor the Apollo 11 20th anniversary, 1989.[12] E. John and N. DeWaard, p. 23.[13] CBS documentary of Ref. 11. Rather saidthere was “less adventure and less risk.” This programwas, of course, aired before the Challenger andColumbia shuttle disasters. Rather was describinghow the shuttles were never out of low-Earth orbit,in contrast to the Apollo moon voyages.[14] C. Krauthammer, “Shock and Awe,” Time,Jan. 24, 2005, p. 74.[15] The 1903 Wright Flyer used to hang over theColumbia, until it was moved to a special Wrightexhibit in 2003 for its centennial. Although theWrights deserve an exhibit room of their own, inmy opinion the juxtaposition of the Wright Flyerand the Columbia made a significant statement.Fall 2011 Radiations 29