Behind the Wings; The Apollo Program

it trains buses behind owing nice bass this program was made possible by wings over the rockies educating and inspiring people of all ages about aviation and space endeavors of the past the president rarely possible by the donors can reach right talk thing and play for home libraries may completely join a story time build a masterpiece and present a puppet show all in one morning more for home libraries dot org this episode made possible by there's three hundred days of sunshine and just my little lighter definitely make the energy here stronger see your family and enjoy every unexpected encounter an outdoor adventure hey

you know i say this a lot but how cool is destiny in fact darrell dr janet come on the amazing that being korean you've never seen before it's bad in nineteen sixty two president kennedy challenged nasa to see the man to the moon and back before the end of the mall and it under the direction of vice president lyndon b johnson congress appropriated funds an asset expanded its programs to achieve president kennedy's vision two significant projects came before apollo to gain

insights on space travel and survival the first was project mercury which isn't the first american into space in nineteen sixty one six astronauts were successfully launched during the mercury program for a total of fifty four hours in space from nineteen sixty five to nineteen sixty six project gemini continue to develop techniques long duration space travel during space missions the gemini spacecraft carried to astronaut crew in advance the masses understanding of space rendezvous and docking re entry and waving methods and the effects of a longer space flight on astronauts the first apollo mission began in nineteen sixty seven the apollo one which was a flight test for the apollo command and service much tragically the cabinet fire during the launch or killed all three crew members leading nasa has suspended may and apollo flight for twenty months old a module shortcomings

were dressed over the next two years a hollow four through ten continued to prepare nasa for achieving the goal of landing a man on the moon before the end of the decade for thirty on july twentieth nineteen sixty nine history was made as apollo eleven astronauts neil armstrong and buzz aldrin successfully landed on the moon's surface while astronaut michael collins orbited overhead after apollo eleven massacre that hits six more missions to the apollo twelve through seventeen only apollo thirteen failed to make a lunar landing when an accident in route to lunar orbit force recruit to return to her the last mission apollo seventeen occurred in december nineteen seventy two over the course of the apollo program a total of twelve astronauts walked on the moon where they conducted increasingly sophisticated scientific study building new insights into the evolution of the moment

each nation explore new areas of the lunar surface and left behind scientific instruments they continue to send back data to earth years later now let's talk to someone who made up of this tree he was in masses like director for nine apollo missions including apollo eleven the amazing scene of cranes in twenty nineteen we celebrated that fiftieth anniversary of the apollo moon launch apollo eleven what is it like to think back on that time israeli opportunity to actually think about what america was in those days for the space program was just one of the things that was moving have the civil rights movement at the peace corps is not all of america was in the process of moving and they're making something happen at this is this is i think a change in today's world people wanna watch things happen as opposed to getting involved and

for me it was basically a i was fifty years younger the day i walked in the mission control i mean it just it was just like i was back there that day at that time in that place with my team and with the leaders i had this was a time of leadership with intermission time of unity within a nation we were one moving towards a goal established by president kennedy they commanded get him back safely go with the majestic marvelous challenge when you guys started the count down in all that's associated with the did you have any idea what it was going to do for the human race we're so busy in those days were flying just generally about a mission every two or three months so soon as we finish one mission we basically be briefed have a few days break time off one in a drink guy like that i don't think any of us really recognize the impact that we would have we go on we'd

read the newspaper said kathleen be ok and this eighth and yet if i think about my people my people were the ones that was the i just love them a radio popular kids basically a tumor on the consul stepping up to one of the greatest responsibilities and they did it they did it perfectly do you miss it yesterday i look at the night i saw written that connected to the panama canal panama canal rose bowl title oceans together apollo illinois a way out of the war tried two worlds together earth and deep space and i think this was so this was sort of a challenge to the people that we have today continue to press its portly main as much as you can of yourself make things happen get involved where do you see us or where would you like to see us in the next fifty years in space travel as many answers

that question affect the first day like this is huge country come together as one again because i think that the key to our future is establishing the unity unnecessary to be successful in one recent uptick i would like to see is back in the moon with stations are permanent stations on board them and serving industrial economic during military purposes writer in the land registration say that military purposes loman but i think that we have to continue to address the use of space for all reasonable activities we got there then once we have learned to live in the moment we can then move further that we can move in the mars we can to continue this process of extortion but before that you have to learn to live in a hostile environment for an extended third time i talk about those as if camping the first time you go out camping you think about all those things you brought that you didn't even those things we forgot takes about four or five dams to get that together and i think that someone of appeals for reasons to go back to them i lived it

and i wish i was fifty years younger and i could be one of the old pop in mission control of a living that kind of an experience all over them after my conversation with gene it was time to explore a state that was significant to the apollo program and continues to push the frontier of space travel ohio first on the small town of guadalcanal now we're talking about pollen why am i sitting on the front steps of a house that's because of this house was the boyhood home of none other than neil armstrong the first man to walk on the moon and the other thing that's really interesting is that he used to work for nasa at the glenn research center which at the time was called the lewis research center that's just up the road in cleveland and there is a ton of information there that i wanna check out so you know it's so we drove up from washington had an hour to go and

research center here in cleveland and i've got john oldham who's the exhibit specialist here on campus thank you so much and i got to say i understand you're actually if they are behind the wings absolutely love the show does a great job done it that you learned here he said we do a great job so tell us a little bit about what glenn research is done for the apollo program short walk firstly of that glenn research center start of lewis research center it was an arrow center back in the forties we become glenn until nineteen ninety nine that was in honor of john glenn hometown guy end up but in iran as lewis research center we were faced with part of the challenges of apollo one of the things glenn had been louis have been working on at the time was hydrogen fuels basically we had a porsche three hundred sixty three foot tall seven million pound rocket in and get the seventeen thousand five hundred miles an hour in less than a hundred miles so the fuel problem was solved by the folks at lewis with hard work dedication and they were they were the kind of spear point of getting hundreds or

control that would later be used to an a it was to do some missions so there were sixteen missions that flew prior to manned missions to the moan that glenn was involved with spacecraft like the rangers' spacecraft rangers work lunar probes that were not not quite capable of soft landing they made hard landings a lever that that on the moon that sense that's very nice pictures on their way out and in addition to that we had lunar orbiter spacecraft that would stay in orbit around the moon and provide very powerfully and some data to help us come pick the spots for we would put ourselves john you had a amazing set of toys but this deal yeah so what we have here is an apollo a seven hour is the basic suit to go to the moon in this particular suit belong to william anderson was the command module pilot for polly it was not a full suit

with his flight spare nail over bolton stitch for stitch identical and how they were made or they were they reform a for the astronaut in this particular city could not sit down there's no city or to live if you remember apollo eleven when you're buzz later they were standing when you landed in the lunar module you're not sitting in a chair was no chair the lunar module so you couldn't even banned all away because it would require things would compromise the safety of the scene to the point where he decided this week that so on the helmet yes this does not look like the home at that you see at all a photograph sure a lot people believe that big a beautiful home with a gold by the actual pressure moment for them when it was you have this pressure bubble that keeps this astronaut breeding mice mice breed blair on you don't want to bet on the lunatic a chance of tripping and breaking it if you had a party to put over that which is what they had that they called the apollo with the leave and the lunar excursion visor assembly it was a hard hat and went over this and had a series of bikers that goal by your race it would lift so that was one of the top of this bubble sleeves that required that's

absolutely so you want to get back and then mcateer you're really cool in here aside from this super awesome space suit john had one more apollo artifacts show me but before we get to that let's talk a little more about what's currently going on it clear as one of ten nasa centers around the country glynn is situated on three hundred and fifty acres of land and contains more than three thousand employees within their dedicated teams glands primary purpose is to research and develop and test innovative technology for aeronautics and space flight need an example check this place out this is this local laboratory also known as the simulated lunar operations laboratory part of their mission is to improve how we get around on other planets surfaces which explains the giant sand

box in the center the real id also explains this collection of unique tires they have exact replicas of the tires used on the lunar rover which were surprisingly light and newer models that will support even heavier lunar vehicles another lab doing interesting work as the exercise countermeasures laboratory which evaluates exercise devices that astronauts used in space this lab simulates the zero gravity of space by hanging test subjects from the ceiling and having them run on this vertical treadmill unfortunately i wasn't allowed to test it out but i did try on this super group the harness that was developed a glint in his used by the astronauts in the international space station ever been told it's not rocket science well this lab is rocket science specifically it's the electric propulsion and power lab which is like the name implies test electric propulsion they're currently testing

thrusters in these huge vacuum chambers the war i and i've seen on gas and make it into a plasma that the rust out the back of spacecraft to propel it forward what is that rocket science is back with john the artifacts he was dying to show me was apollo moon rocks so first rocco i show you is a rock from apollo fifteen so chris rock has a name it's name is fifty know five eight point one nine to the one nine two is a section of that sample so this rock was sectioned off into multiple pieces and and this piece was separated from those pieces of keep in mind picked up in the vacuum of space on the moon the only atmosphere of earth this rocket ever seen is nitrogen we use nitrogen as an inert gas to keep reacting with any of the minerals in that rock and these pieces were students mature called lucite my mom used the wax the kitchen floor with lucite know x rays similar crime a journal but that's

fifty years old it's been an amateur for fifty years so it's protecting it is not in our atmosphere and this came from the apollo fifteen so there's a shiver when rock to r os the actual astronaut have picked up that rock thank you the rocket to show you now is quite different and it was cut especially women were rightly so this is a sample from apollo sixteen lunar in northside in an order site represents the older parts of them about four point two billion years old and the biggest surprise we found in these two samples and consistently in all of eight hundred and forty pounds are brought back forty percent oxygen by weight the moon is full of auschwitz mineral oxygen it requires more critics of chemistry to take some physical mechanical arm processes to do that but it's loaded with without it so we've seen some amazing things here on the glenn

research center's campus but now we're talking to dr janet of bondi who flew on sps ninety one ninety nine and won all four a full fledged astronaut thank you so much for being here this typewriter so going is one of ten research centers scattered throughout the country what percentage is going to play in this whole over all kind of push to get back to there are you know maybe for senate and really push this bayside and that would be the jacksons they said the candidate mr sharp break and then we're probably next with with contributions to space flight when you get a kind of important in proportion yet the percussion part and so they stitched kinds of propulsion to this chemical proportions otc that vehicles launch off a lot of that as oliver for a thing that marshall specialty and wildly you felt like a portion of that if i believe that very very energy efficient

is really cool now on the space i go awry and work in the day at the gateway arch and who knows what a lot of stuff so it started the rhine so it's our eye and we have a new crew capsule that will go back to the moment and you're in the capsule where the crusade says a model called the service model and glenn research center is responsible for that and what it is actually manufactured in europe in bremen germany by air bus and then they have shipped the first element to the kennedy space center it's being integrated with the crew capsule and then we bring the whole integrate its back here to the plum brook station and sandusky ohio and we will be back in testing and that model in the world's largest vacuum chamber so it's very important to mention that we test this vehicle properly the nature of the family laws having me that he went on and for the first time they'll be safe and do we have kind of a rough estimate date that will give them a clinical come here this

fall and test here and then we will show the back and we should be able to fly it ended one one against the unmanned mission that's ok and then between them into may and now only a couple years ago a plane between and this case we want that he was on the moment where we're doing it to stay for a longer period of time going to a lot more science about how to build habitats on them and how to protect yourself to radiation how to grow food on servers of them and be sustainable because what we learned there we can take him put on mars at a future date talking to john he showed us a moon rocks and i asked him if i could have one then he so rudely said no lip synching run the joint i can't stand it well i didn't get a moon rock dr gawande schedule me a

tour of clean research center second facility in sandusky ohio plum brook station the facilities here are designed to simulate environmental conditions found on earth in low earth orbit on the surfaces of planets and in deep space leading us in the world's largest base environment simulation chamber is the director of the masses plum brook station general david stringer you're standing in the five wrote an acoustic test complex a fancy name for a very strong facilities sixty eight foot that reinforced concrete walls all we ever reverberate acoustic test chamber with thirty six warren zimmer the most powerful in the world you wanna make sure that the pressure of going into space doesn't somehow snap mechanical components in spacecraft so you test the shaping the window to find out what the force of gravity the g almonds are on a device and then you can build a device put it in here check it against that launch environment and then inspected afterwards to see if you step

the second thing you're on here you were standing on its called a mobile plate which allows you to find out what the natural frequency of that object is if you don't know everything that's been made and even you i have a natural frequency if you hit it it vibrates you take multiples of that frequency and exploited on this table here which can handle seventy five thousand pounds of soul spacecraft vibrated at it this way if you this way to have fiscal path of section five because things on a spacecraft might sloshed so we'll test of things that have tanks with fluid full empty and half full because you wanna see if there's a couple the fact to new operating on a facility like this so we can do that then when you turn around you get to see a reinforced concrete toward that's five million pounds so on the other side of that which we can see the data last

because it's under vacuum is the biggest from a vacuum chamber in the world so hundred feet wide and twenty two feet tall to decide nasa would actually use something that large anybody who wants to get results in a space that large to fit their spacecraft we tested the space x is that they were various we've tested the ariane five am fearing built by her work are now named drew i prefer european space agency's so earlier you mentioned the mars rovers have those been tested in the magma chamber actually the inflation bags the rover's came down in the bags looked like chewing gum rover that would split on the surface of mars the banks were inflation tested in the class facilities so in space racial society and then we have brought them in here and slam them against rocks from hawaii pretending to be a martian rocks on an inclined plane to see if they would tear the last third test was successful after they've watched

both spacecraft works better to know here here it's much cheaper than a seasonal feast before you launch general i hear that ryan is coming to town into this facility remind us a little bit of exactly what a ryan is sure so ryan is the replacement for the space shuttle so it draws on apollo design in that it has accrued model which like the martins primed for and as the service module power pack as a pilot in the service module in this case is built by european space agency three countries italy germany and france based out of bremen germany assembled the service module they enjoyed and kennedy space center and that assembly will come here to test and so through that great big door here's where the testing will happen for about four months or so including about sixty days of formal vacuum test to do to thermal cycles super hot super cold and then once again

to make sure that it can stand the court packing space and then not about that game just in the space that it sent it will get electromagnetic interference testing sparking radio waves a hand today the spacecraft in that radio wave and see if the spacecraft electronics the avionics are interrupted in any way that's really cool stuff i love how much goes on here nasa is great about sharing their facilities and their knowledge with other companies in other countries that is a win win for everybody thinks one of the most significant milestones in the field of aerospace and even fifty years later the accomplishments of the apollo program are still being celebrated around the world incredible insights from this psychology koreans visiting the boyhood home the apollo program

we often say that it's been the donors can read right talk thing and play for home libraries may completely join a story time build a masterpiece and present a puppet show all in one morning more about the home libraries dot org denver's three hundred days of sunshine with a smile

saliva they definitely they clean energy here stronger so you can enjoy the blue skies and mountains on to soak it all in