With the news today that Iran has sent a monkey into space, it seems appropriate to post these pictures of the less than luxury accommodation occupied by chimpanzee Ham in an earlier era of space exploration.
I checked out the Mercury-Redstone 2 capsule on display at the California Science Center while waiting to view the Space Shuttle last week.
Four year old Ham, who was an ape rather than a monkey, launched into space on 31st January 1961. He proved that beings similar to humans could survive and perform functions in space: to which end Ham was given a series of levers to pull on command (red, white, and black above).
It’s quite a mess in there:
Amazingly, the capsule Alan Shepard piloted to orbit three months later didn’t look that much different.
Ham beats the Iranian monkey on altitude, reaching 157 miles against the Iranian’s 75 miles – not that either would be aware of how high they were. The BBC report suggests the Iranian’s were testing the acceleration and deceleration of the rocket – although there’s the inevitiable ambiguity over why they’d want to do that, and the implications for weapons testing [monkey survives = warhead survives ?].
In related news, the U.S. National Institutes of Health announced this month they’d be stopping the use of chimpanzees for medical research; although I’m not sure where that leaves potential future space chimps.
I did kind of wish for a second or two today, staring up at the big, black, underbelly of Space Shuttle Endeavour – boxed away at the California Science Center in Los Angeles – that I’d made more of an effort to see she or her sisters performing live.
Am I getting all mushy and romantic about a spacecraft now? Well, maybe just a bit. My wife Erin said she felt unexpectedly moved after our visit. I’d set myself to appreciative-engineer-mode before I went in, but still felt like I was standing on the rim of the Grand Canyon for the first time; you’ve seen all the postcards and videos, and can’t imagine the real deal adding anything new – but it does. That’s twice I’ve been emotionally sucked in by an iconic cliché. Shocking.
Objects are evocative. At one point I found myself back in my lab as a research student in Birmingham in 1986, hearing about the Challenger accident. Then I’m back imagining all those tiles, engines, doors, and windows flying apart.
And there on Endeavour is that area of wing leading-edge, damaged on Columbia by falling debris during launch, causing her demise on re-entry in 2003 (more on that in this earlier post).
First Impressions
There is of course plenty of engineering to appreciate, and science behind it to ponder. But my gut reaction is how big she is, the length of the cargo bay, and how….dirty . It looks like she’s been treated like some science fiction fan might treat an Airfix model of the Millennium Falcon: roughed up, artificially distressed – so it looks like the real thing. Except the distress, evidently manageable, is real.
Size perception is odd too. I’ve seen video of the shuttle during ascent (in fact you can see it in Matt Mellis’s movie/iPad App called ‘Ascent’), where the ‘body flap’ – that piece below the engine in the picture below – is vibrating violently; it’s positively oscillating. The flap looks small and flimsy on the film, but it’s a huge construction; the forces must be tremendous.
Engines
Thrusters
Tiles
The famous tiles, part of the Shuttle’s Thermal Protection System (TPS), are unmistakable. Designed not to ablate like the heat shields on the Apollo capsules, tiles do suffer wear and damage, and some had clearly been replaced with new ones for display.
The complexity and variation of tile design is striking. If you think tiling round the bathroom wash-basin is tricky, take a look at the area round the main engine gimbals and thrusters of the Shuttle. No wonder maintenance costs were high.
Earthquake Protection
Several sliding bearings, or seismic isolators, sit between the Shuttle and its supporting pillars, insulating Endeavour from the perils of Los Angeles’ earthquakes. The idea is the Shuttle rocks around harmlessly until the shaking ground settles down.
Visiting
We saw Endeavour in temporary accommodation; it’s destined to be mounted vertically in a custom-designed building. That said, the exhibition as it stands doesn’t feel temporary, and the associated display areas and accompanying audio-visuals describing California’s particular role in the Shuttle story and showing off various artifacts from the program – including, importantly, the Shuttle’s WC or ‘space potty’, are excellent.
Entry to the California Science Center is free, but there’s a very reasonable $2 entry charge or ticket booking fee to see Endeavour.
Parting Impressions
Even as we celebrate, the Space Shuttle program is criticised, particularly around issues of cost and safety, but also the scope of its achievements. As always, it’s easy to find fault in hindsight, and judge historical decisions by the political and economic expedients of the present day. Personally, I reckon we’d be in a much sorrier state had the program not gone ahead. The Shuttle was the workhorse behind the International Space Station, the full learning from which I suspect has yet to be converted. And Endeavour personally, so to speak, enabled the repair of the Hubble Space Telescope.
NASA is at a turning point, collaborating more closely with private partners and, most recently, other nations on its manned space program. While the arrival of new entrants, working methods, and relationships are culturally refreshing, surely much of the knowledge and expertise behind them has its roots in the Shuttle and related programs.
Hopefully this note’s been short and sweet. There’s no point my repeating loads of technical and historical information you can get from many sources: not least the NASA and California Science Center websites, which, like Endeavour, are both worth a visit.
The secret to becoming an astronaut is that you have to really, really, really want to be one.
Oh yes – and to be considered for the European Space Agency’s 2008 recruitment round currently in progress (they recruit only every 15 years or so) you also need to be the right age and nationality.
So we were told tonight by French astronaut Jean-Francois Clervoys at the London Science Museum’s Dana Centre. Three time shuttle astronaut Clervoys, with 675 space-hours under his belt, joined a panel of experts in space history, medicine, and psychology to educate and entertain the forty or so of us volunteering for ‘Space Station Dana’.
But it wasn’t all one way. Split into teams, and clutching our Astronaut Training and Selection Manuals, we set off on a range of psychological, physical, and knowledge tests that were fun – and sufficiently taxing – to get a flavour of what 21st century ‘Right Stuff’ is all about.
One of the exercises involved an imaginary manned trip to Mars. It takes 20 minutes for communications to travel from Earth to Mars, so any issues with the spacecraft once it’s a good distance from Earth will need sorting without the help of real time chit-chat with engineers back home. So our psychological test was based on that scenario, the idea being to get things right first time through good planning and authority, all the time maintaining good relations and respect in the team (they used a Post-it/paper-clip tower building exercise, conducted in total silence after an initial planning session).
Contrary to popular belief, Clervoys said, you don’t have to have super-human qualities to be an astronaut. So what are the qualifications? Well, you’ll typically be 27 to 37 years of age – more so your sponsors get a sensible return-on-investment in working years than some set-in-stone physiological reason. It also helps if you have a PhD in a relevant discipline and can speak Russian. Then there’s the raft of psychological tests – which are pretty tough. You will need to be physically fit; but again, that’s more about not dropping out of the programme and your career through ill health than an ability to withstand physical extremes.
If you get selected after all that, it’s 18 month basic training in Europe, the USA, and Russia; and you’re on your way to the dream!
And in winding up the evening, a dream is exactly how Jean-Francois relived his adventure for us, describing the effect of dimming the shuttle’s cabin lights with the sun and earth behind the spacecraft, and looking at the “milky way like a highway” in the total blackness of space.
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