Category Archives: History

History, Mars, Rockets

Videos: An Apollo tribute + Fidget spinners in micro-g + Igniting rockets + Virtually roving Mars

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Some videos of interest:

** Via The Chiles Files comes this beautifully made tribute by Christian Stangl to the Apollo program combining thousands of photos with animations along with a nice soundtrack:

** Fun with fidget spinners in weightlessness on the ISS:

** How Rockets Are Ignited – Things Kerbal Space Program Doesn’t Teach – Another fun rocket tutorial with Scott Manley of the Kerbal Space Program

** Check out NASA JPL’s Access Mars: A WebVR Experiment to travel Mars in Virtual Reality created in collaboration with Google:

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Education, History

60 years since Sputnik 1 reach orbit

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Sixty years ago today, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite. The news electrified the U.S. and set off a sequence of events that eventually led to the Apollo 11 landing of two astronauts on the Moon 12 years later.

Here are some details of the story of how the Soviet satellite came to be:

Here is a CBS TV news report from October 1957:

To get an idea of the impact that Sputnik had on American society, I recommend Homer Hickam’s autobiographical book Rocket Boys. He recounts how as a youngster in a remote coal mining town he was so inspired by Sputnik and the US efforts to get to space that he and his friends began building rockets of their own. They were soon demanding that their high school teach advanced physics and calculus. Hickam later became a rocket engineer at NASA. Homer is featured in this video about the “Sputnik Moment” and the huge influence it had on US education:

From 1957 till the mid-1960s, there was a wave of intense interest and support in technology and science across American society. College entrance exam scores reached record highs. Many young people growing up during that period went into scientific and engineering fields outside of space but they credit space with first inspiring them to study science and math.

There were, however, some drawbacks to the crash program mentality that was set off by Sputnik. Here is a commentary on how Sputnik and the Space Race that followed between the US and the Soviet Union created a false view of how space can and should be developed: Sputnik at 60: How Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos Started a New Space Age | Rand Simberg/The Weekly Standard.

Activism, History, SpaceCasts

Video: TMRO Orbit 10.35 – Stories from a Skylab Astronaut

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The latest TMRO.tv live program episode is now available on line: Stories from a Skylab Astronaut – Orbit 10.35 – TMRO

NASA Astronaut and Skylab 4 commander Jerry Carr joins us this week to talk about his experiences in the Stories from a Skylab Astronaut – Orbit 10.35. Apollo Program and commanding the United States first Space Station.

Space news topics discussed:

Northrop Grumman to acquire Orbital ATK
CRS-12 Dragon returns to Earth
Chinese space station refueling demo

TMRO is viewer supported:

TMRO:Space is a crowd funded show. If you like this episode consider contributing to help us to continue to improve. Head over to http://www.patreon.com/tmro for information plus our all new goals and reward levels

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A couple of recent shorts from TMRO:

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Astronomy, History, Space participation

Video: The Space Age began long before Sputnik

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Commercial space ventures such as SpaceX, Blue Origin, Bigelow Aerospace, and Stratolaunch that are backed by wealthy moguls are often described as representing a brand new phenomena. However, NASA historian Alex MacDonald has a new book out called The Long Space Age: The Economic Origins of Space Exploration from Colonial America to the Cold War, in which he shows that private space initiatives actually go back to the early 1800s.

Those early space moguls did not fund rockets but instead back most of the large astronomical observatories in the USA. Lick Observatory, for example, funded by California railroad magnate James Lick in  the 1870s, is comparable to  a $1.5 billion dollar project today.

I’ll note that before World War II, the US federal government funded very little science or technology R&D. Most all such activities were supported either by private organizations such as companies, universities and institutions like the Smithsonian or by private individuals. This changed during WWII with the emergence of Big Science projects including the successful development of radar and the atomic bomb. Federal support for science and R&D after the war was further encouraged by the Cold War technology competition with the USSR.

For more about MacDonald’s book and the history of private space initiatives in the US, see:

And here is a talk by MacDonald at the “The Dawn of Private Space Science” symposium held this past June in NY City:

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History, Space Collecting

Apollo 11 lunar samples bag at Sotheby’s auction sells for $1.8M

The Sotheby’s space memorabilia auction (see earlier posting) went off on Thursday and there were a number of : Apollo 11 moon rock bag sells for $1.8M at Sotheby’s space auction | collectSPACE.

The most prominent item for sale was the Apollo 11 Contingency Lunar Sample Return bag, which was used by Neil Armstrong on the Apollo 11 mission to hold some samples gather soon after landing in case there was a problem and they had to leave the Moon in a hurry. The bag material is embedded wit lunar dust. The collectSPACE article recounts the interesting tale of how the bag, which was once sold for $995, ended up on the auction block and sold for $1,812,500.

Some other items also went for significant amounts:

After the lunar sample return bag, the next highest amount commanded by the 173 lots Sotheby’s auctioned Thursday was $275,000 for the flown flight plan used by the crew on the 1970 Apollo 13 mission.

Nice to see that the Chesley Bonestell illustration for a Wernher von Braun book went for $125,000.

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“Stone Architecture on Mars, Demonstrating Mars’ Two-Thirds Less Gravity than Earth’s”- Chesley Bonestell. “10½ by 11 inch oil on artist’s board, signed “Chesley Bonestell” lower right. Verso stamped “Chesley Bonestell”, titled on verso in pen in Bonestell’s hand, with additional pencil notation reading “In 1985 I realized that the columns should be 1¾ times thicker (measure closest col. at base) than they are in the ptg.”