Child of the Space Age
My father was an aerospace engineer and my grandmother a planetarium director. So I've always had a personal relationship with the space program -- never as my career, but as something I followed avidly, the way children of military families are more aware of wars and military operations. I read wonderfully-illustrated books on space, visited a lot of planetariums, kept up with NASA missions and the latest space discoveries, and watched a lot of science fiction.
On this lens, I'll focus on the missions, discoveries, and historical events connected with space exploration that hold special meaning for me.
This lens is part of my Travel Threads collection, using the patches I collected as a child to tell stories about my travels and hobbies.
Table of Contents
- Apollo 11: Video · Memories · Books and DVDs
- Columbia: Memories · Video: Maiden Voyage
- Space Shuttle: Mission Links · The Space Shuttle Operator's Manual
- Challenger: Memories · Video: STS-41C Launch
- Space Shuttle: Newsfeed · Photos · Mission Patches · More Videos · Opinion Poll
- Memories: Comets!
- General Space Program Videos
- Memories: Observatories and Planetariums
- Plexo: Suggest a Good Space Link!
- Memories: Classic Science Fiction · Sci-Fi Series for Sale
- Back to Travel Threads Lens
- Guestbook: What Do You Think About the Space Program?
Video: Apollo 11
Memories: Apollo 11
The Memory I Never Had
"I wish I'd been born during the space age." I startled my parents with that remark when I was small, although Skylab hadn't yet fallen from the sky, Voyager was headed towards Jupiter, and Viking had recently landed on Mars. But space was passé; it wasn't on the news much anymore.This patch is my first, and it commemorates the memory I don't have: Apollo 11, the first time people set foot on the moon.
Odd tidbit: It was "one small step for man," but I don't think most people realize now how much of a leap of faith that step was. At the time, scientists weren't certain how firm the surface of the moon was. In the video, Armstrong wasn't making idle chitchat when he reported that the lunar lander's feet had pressed only a few inches into the dust. He wanted to make sure he wouldn't sink into it like snow, because in his cumbersome spacesuit, he might not have been able to pull himself out!
Neil Armstrong's a closet Trekkie, by the way. I've always envied my Mom for getting to sit next to him a few times at company banquets.
Apollo Program Books and DVDs
Memories: Columbia
Goodnight, Little Sister
The Space Age started again.As a child I didn't understand just how many people were involved in the space shuttle program, and imagined my father personally helping put the Columbia together. He was gone six months for the project, so it was an important part of my childhood.
The Columbia launch on April 12, 1981 was a few days after my tenth birthday, and I was attending a slumber party. My friends' parents promised to wake me for it -- but in fact, they decided to let me sleep in, not understanding how much it mattered to me. I felt like Margot in Bradbury's short story, "All Summer in a Day."
For years after that, I'd follow every launch and landing with my Space Shuttle Operator's Manual checklist, a kitchen timer and my blueprints of the cockpit, flipping switches along with the crew. Long after the shuttle launches and landings were no longer part of the news, I was usually aware when a space shuttle was flying, and often what they were doing over our heads.
Commander Bob Crippen autographed my manual years later after he retired from NASA and became my Dad's boss.I've only gotten to meet "Crip" once, but he's a self-effacing guy with a ton of stories, and as you can well imagine I hung on his every word. The one I remember most vividly is that the abort button on the ceiling was hard to reach while suited up, so they had a string tied to it -- and during one launch he found it had gotten tangled around part of his suit! He had to disentangle himself very carefully.
Unfortunately I can't celebrate the shuttle program without acknowledging its heartbreaks. On February 1st, 2003, Columbia burned up over my grandmother's house less than a year before she died. Since she was an astronomer, she knew exactly what was streaking across the sky. I wish she hadn't lived to see that.
I feel guilty for mourning the ship's loss quite as much as the crew, but I grew up with Columbia. She still hangs on our Christmas tree (a perfect little replica with one of my Dad's satellites coming out of the cargo bay).
Video: Columbia's Maiden Voyage
"The Spaceship That Returns to Earth"
This video makes me cry.
STS-1: Shuttle Columbia Flight#1 April 12, 1981
Runtime: 4:13
17835 views
10 Comments:
Space Shuttle Mission Links
Officially, the STS (Space Transportation System)
- NASA Space Shuttle Program - Main Page
- Past and current missions of the Space Shuttle fleet.
- STS-1: First Space Shuttle Mission
- NASA's homepage on the original Columbia mission with videos, reminiscences from Crip and Young, and lots of info.
- Remembering STS-107
- Beautiful interactive video remembering the seven shuttle astronauts who died in the Columbia disaster.
- SPACE.com -- Lives Lost, Lives Saved: The Benefits of Shuttle Science
- News article: Experiments done by the Columbia astronauts will lead to improved earthquake safety, cleaner air, better health on Earth and will almost surely save lives.
- President Nixon's 1972 Announcement on the Space Shuttle
- Why the shuttle program was initiated: spinoffs and industry research.
- The Space Place :: Inventions (Spinoffs) from Space
- Simple, fun website showing some of the cool inventions that have indeed come out of the space program -- most of them the shuttle program.
- Benefits of the Space Program
- A short list of 79 or so spinoffs from the space program, including GPS, aircraft collision avoidance systems, home smoke detectors, many medical breakthroughs, cellphones, DirectTV and XM radio, and a few other "minor" technologies.
The Space Shuttle Operator's Manual
Space Shuttle Operator's Manual, Revised Edition
Amazon Price: (as of 10/13/2008)
Designed for kids attending Space Camp, this guide is more readable than your car owner's manual and a lot more fun. Launch and landing checklists, how to retrieve a satellite with the robot arm, spacewalks, operating the toilet -- it's all here, plus good explanations and diagrams on how the shuttle works.
Memories: Space Shuttle Challenger
STS-41C
The only launch I've gotten to watch live was on April 6, 1984. Dad was kind enough to get us tickets on the beach 7 miles away, although he could've gotten tickets for himself in the VIP stand 3 miles away.The patch shows a spacewalk. Look closely to see that it's actually a reflection on an astronaut's faceplate!
One of my Dad's experiments was carried on this flight in the LDEF (Long Duration Exposure Facility) satellite, seen on the patch being lifted out of the cargo bay. This satellite allowed aerospace companies to test the effects of longterm space exposure to various materials -- a vital experiment whose results have been used for the modern generation of satellites including those used by your cellphone and GPS.
STS-41C was the first time the shuttle was used to retrieve and repair a satellite in space instead of letting it burn up at a cost of millions. The satellite was Solar MAX, also depicted, which monitored solar activity for years. Such monitoring helped scientists learn about sunspots, solar flares, and how the sun impacts communications and radio signals as well as the earth's weather and ozone layer.
I recorded the mission control broadcast for this launch and used it later as part of my pre-launch ritual using my operator's manual to follow along with the astronauts.
I'd stopped doing that by the time the Challenger exploded, which happened while I was at school. When I heard the news, I thought my friends were playing a prank on me, and rushed to the science lab's TV to see for myself. I now realize my classmates were using me as an outlet and scapegoat ("your father is a murderer!") to express the disbelief, shock and sadness we were all feeling. That was my first 9/11.
We wonder why space is still so risky. We forget that even state-of-the-art military aircraft with higher operating budgets and a century's worth of testing, refinements, and flights have accidents. The shuttles were five or six experimental craft put through the most grueling conditions imaginable, flying billions of miles and subjected to speeds, pressures, and temperatures that the strongest fighter plane has never had to endure. All shuttle crews are keenly aware of this: they know that they are exploring a new frontier with the same magnitude of risk once faced by those sailing west to find a New World.
Space Shuttle Challenger STS-41C Launch
STS-41C Launch
Launch of the Space Shuttle Challenger on 4-6-84 with the LDEF platform and to repair the Solar Max satellite. NASA's Hugh Harris and Jim Lawrence commentating. Source NASA.
Runtime: 2:50
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7 Comments:
NASA Newsfeed
The latest from the Space Shuttle and International Space Station
Fetching RSS feed... please stand bySpace Shuttle Photos
Below are photos taken by amateur photographers posted on Flickr, plus some NASA photos that people have added (NASA makes its photos available to the public for reuse.)
The Enterprise is actually the first space shuttle that ever flew, named after the Star Trek ship by popular demand. She was a prototype used for testing and practice landings, but she's never been equipped with space-worthy engines or shielding.
Endeavor Launch 1994
Columbia ferried back to Florida
Night launch of Endeavor
Atlantis landing
Space shuttle gloves
Space Shuttle Cockpit
Space Shuttle Main Engine
Discovery STS-116
Enterprise
Enterprise
ISS and Space Shuttle
Space Shuttle Atlantis
Enterprise
NASA fuel tank camera
NASA publicity shot
![Space Shuttle Discovery approaches ISS for docking [1680x1050] by TopTechWriter.US](http://static.flickr.com/125/338573258_6576d11c64_s.jpg)
Discovery approaches ISS
![STS-122 Space Shuttle Atlantis sunrise rollout [1680x1050] by TopTechWriter.US](http://static.flickr.com/2215/2040923940_a2e3c9bec0_s.jpg)
Crawler transporting shuttle
Northern lights from shuttle
Atlantis: great shot
Night launch of Atlantis
Before first Columbia launch
NASA Mission Patches on Amazon
NASA Space Shuttle STS-1 Mission Patch
STS-1. A visual allusion to NASA's logo and the fact that this was the first "spaceship that returns to earth."
Amazon Price: (as of 10/13/2008)
Space Shuttle Missions Patch (50), Wall Print by Spaceshots, 26.75x38.5
Poster of the first fifty Space Shuttle mission patches. STS stands for "Space Transport System," by the way.
Amazon Price: $29.99 (as of 10/13/2008)
NASA Space Shuttle 1984-1986 Mission Patches - 4 inch set
Collection of some of the early space shuttle patches worn by the astronauts, like the ones I've collected. You can get all the other years from this company as well.
Amazon Price: (as of 10/13/2008)
Space Mission Patches
Great book highlighting the design of some of NASA's best and most memorable mission patches, usually chosen and designed by the crew themselves.
Amazon Price: (as of 10/13/2008)
Space Shuttle Videos
Poll: Your Opinion About the Space Shuttle
Memories: Comets!
The first comet I ever saw, holding binoculars with freezing fingers, was Halley's Comet. It's famous because it made a close pass in 1910, and because astronomer Edmund Halley first discovered that comets were returning objects based on its regular reappearances every 76 years or so.
We have a lot of good images of Halley from space probes sent by Europe, the U.S.S.R. and Japan, but most people missed Halley in 1986 because it was never brighter than a fuzzy dot. I can't remember whether it just didn't get much of a tail this time, or whether it came in on the far side of Earth's orbit, or both. Here's a good Halley's Comet Webpage that shows what it looked like to me through binoculars, and that page also lists all of the comet's historical appearances going back to 240 BC!
Another important comet for me was Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 (ninth comet discovered by those two astronomers), which broke apart and crashed into Jupiter in July 1994. The web was in its infancy -- I think Netscape had only just been invented, or we may still have been using Mosaic -- and this event was HUGE for astronomers! Every telescope on and off of Earth was focused on the same event, and scientists were uploading pictures and comparing data for the first time almost in realtime. It helped the world's telescopes cross-calibrate their instruments, since they were all photographing the same thing.
I stayed up late each night viewing all the incredible photos of the flares as Jupiter's hydrogen-rich atmosphere exploded from the force of the impact (just like meteors, when something slams into the atmosphere that fast, it burns).
Here's the old Shoemaker-Levy 9 Website where all the photos, info, and news was archived. It gives you a glimpse of what the World Wide Web looked like in 1994!We've had a few spectacular comets in the last decade or so. I didn't get a snapshot of the gorgeous Comet Hyakutake, but at right is a picture of Halle-Bopp that I took in Joshua Tree Park in 1997, using a rather grainy film and an automatic camera (computer scanners also weren't as good in those days). The Pleiades are on the left. It's not actually sunset; I had a timed exposure and waited for the headlights of a distant car to illuminate the foreground.
Space Program Videos
Memories: Observatories and Planetariums
This patch is a souvenir from a December 1979(?) trip to Big Bend, Texas with my grandparents. McDonald Observatory was open to the public about one day a month. It was impressively huge; being in the dome and getting to look at the giant telescope and early computers was amazing! Unfortunately it was sleeting and hailing that night, so we didn't get to look through the telescope. I've gotten to look through a few other telescopes -- including my grandmother's, plus my own little Televue -- since then.My grandmother Frances Friedman was the first director of Hudnall Planetarium in Tyler, Texas, teaching thousands of schoolchildren about space and the night sky. I remember helping her simulate meteors by zipping a flashlight across the planetarium ceiling! She worked with Carl Sagan and was invited to Mission Control for some of the Voyager mission flybys.
Suggest a Good Space Link!
Do you know a great website on the space program? Have a favorite mission, scientific discovery, or space video? Leave a link here, and explain why you like it!
Or vote on those already suggested.
#1
Space.com: the Place for Space News
Space.com provides information on everything Space - satellites, stars, astronomy, the Sun, planets, NASA and more. Great realtime streaming video fro...1 point
Memories: Classic Science Fiction
Science fiction is the mythology of space. We've explored most of the planet,so we can't have legends about Atlantis and mysteries places "out there" unless we set them in the future or in a galaxy far, far away.I like science fiction because it promises that we will have a future, and tries to imagine what it'll be like. At the same time, many science fiction shows -- especially old Star Trek (I haven't watched the newer spin-offs) and Babylon 5 -- present contemporary issues like racism, religious clashes, terrorism, unionized labor, political corruption, war and AIDs by camouflaging them, depicting alien races and other people dealing with similar problems so we can view them from a fresh perspective.
As a child I was a fan of campy old Dr. Who, original Star Trek and Blake's 7, a little-known gritty British science fiction show that was a send-up of Star Trek in which the Federation was a totalitarian interstellar empire controlling its populations with drugs in the drinking water! The special effects of those shows were awful, and the acting wasn't much better, but the plots were imaginative and varied, though they look dated to modern viewers.Babylon 5, I think, is the best science fiction to have hit the small screen in the last decade: it draws on classical mythology and timeless themes that Joseph Campbell would've recognized immediately, yet its characters are complex, real personalities, and the acting is superb.
Good (or at Least Classic) Science Fiction
Travel Threads Lens
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Travel Threads: My Patch Jacket
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It's been about twenty years since I last put on this old windbreaker, which I wore into my late teens in the late 1980s. I was never a Girl Scout, but I collected patches wherever my family travelled. So this jacket has a lot of memories sewn onto i...
Guestbook: What Do You Think About Space Exploration?
How has the space program touched you, personally? Have any special memories you'd like to share?
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GypsyPirate
What a delightful lens - it's going to take me a few more visits to be able to enjoy it all. Thank you for sharing! Posted April 04, 2008 |
