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#41
02-14-2018, 03:21 AM
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Being Dutch and 47 puts me in that position where spaceflight wasn't really anywhere close to my world. The lunar landings were over before my earliest memories, Skylab and Apollo-Soyuz happened without me noticing. Then in 1978, my grandfather told me about spaceflight and got me not just interested but fascinated. He bought me some books on the matter and there was an educational series on TV the next year about the 20 somewhat years of space exploration.
That was what grabbed me the most. The grainy, shaky black and white footage of brave people that dared to ride a rocket, not knowing what would actually happen. The 'primitive' appearance of the first satellites, the development of spacecraft and suits, and the promise of the space shuttle, which had not yet flown but had completed tests in the Mojave desert. At that time the recently formed ESA announced they had jobs for astronauts and a Dutch physycist got in the program. I even met him when I was eight or so. That was when all of it really started to come alive for me. I have been fascinated ever since. I wanted to become an astronaut myself, but I was embarrassingly bad at stuff with numbers and I was colourblind. So at that time it was clear it never would happen so when I was 12 I stopped chasing that dream and eventually ended up going to art school. But still spaceflight was one of my main interests, I read a lot of books about it and I still do. Still, that grainy footage of the first pioneering period 1950 - 1970 gives me those thrills and chills of how dangerous it was taking those first steps into the unknown. I have never seen an actual rocket or a launch in real life, the closest I have been to the real stuff was a big travelling NASA exhibition that visited the Netherlands a couple of years back. Seeing real rocket engines, space suits and mock-ups of Mercury, Gemini and Apollo capsules close up was great. Nowadays I am a documentary film maker and the last couple of years I have been working on and off on a film about the only satellite the Dutch ever made on their own, which in its time was a technological marvel, even to NASA. The satellite has been almost forgotten, it seems, and I wanted to get it back in the sporlights, because it was such a marvellous achievement. I met one of the astronomers and a couple of the engineers that designed and built the satellite and interviewed them. They all are quite old already, one of them, an astronomer, was 95 when I filmed him. I also got my hands on wonderful, almost never seen before archival footage and personal photos of the project. Everything is there to make this film happen. The only thing missing is funding. No bucks, no Buck Rogers. I have tried my best to get the money from all kinds of charitable cultural/art/science foundations in Dutchyland and I almost got all of the budget I needed, when the broadcaster (which is a crucial factor for getting the film realised) withdrew its pledge to broadcast it. It all came to a grinding halt. It still is there and still needs lots of work and I am sure it will be realised. I hope. I guess that meeting those engineers and astronomers is the closest thing I will ever be to a space project. 
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#42
02-16-2018, 12:54 PM
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The Houston Saturn V is in an air-conditioned "tin building" constructed to completely cover the rocket. SUPPOSEDLY "Space Center Houston", the "for profit" visitor center that NASA contracts to run the former Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center visitor center, is going to raise funds to build a nicer new display building to replace the "tin barn" (as some folks disparagingly call it) but of course that will cost millions and funds are tight, so it'll probably never happen. The building is air conditioned to control the humidity and keep the salt air from the nearby Gulf of Mexico at bay, but I've been there and they've had the A/C turned off and the doors propped open... apparently in an effort to save money... If they can't afford to keep the air conditioners turned on, HOW do they ever think that they'll afford a multi-million dollar building for the Saturn V? At least it's under cover... 40 years of bird crap, blazing sun, hurricanes, and thunderstorms had definitely done a LOT of damage which they beautifully restored. It makes me mad, because here is this IRREPLACEABLE historical artifact and it sits out like an old Chevy on blocks to rot... at least it's under cover now. It's not like they're not charging enough money at Space Center Houston, either... the tickets are up to about $26 bucks a head for the day now, plus $6 parking... (of course you CAN visit "rocket park" for free-- just go across the street to the JSC main entrance, stop at the guard shack, and tell them you want to go to rocket park-- they'll wave you through the guard shack and you turn immediately behind it to the left and pull into the parking lot of the rocket park, and can spend as much time as you like in the Saturn V building and outdoor rocket displays...) That is the reason that Houston didn't get a space shuttle-- too cheap to build a "proper" display for it... Which is another one of my big pet peeves... there is NO rhyme or reason to how NASA displays their historical rockets, particularly the shuttles. Discovery sits on its wheels like it landed in the Udvar-Hazy branch of the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum near Dulles Airport in Washington DC... which is fine-- it's right across from Enola Gay and many other historical aircraft and spacecraft that are simply too large to be displayed in the main NASM in Washington DC proper. The Enterprise, which never flew in space, only performed the Approach and Landing Tests (flown by Fred Haise of Apollo 13, among others) and was SUPPOSED to be converted to fly into space, but never was ($$$$) sits rotting on an aircraft carrier in New York City (which I get it-- plenty of tourists, but NY had NOTHING to do with the space program other than technical support at most). Atlantis is sitting in a shiny new wing of the visitor center at KSC they built for it, propped up on supports at a jaunty angle with its payload bay doors open, as if it's "flying in space". Ramps allow you to walk up and over the wing and look into the payload bay. Unfortunately the wing was unfinished the last time I got out to Florida five years ago. My daughter and I saw Endeavour as it flew into Houston and arrived at Ellington Field for the last time as it was being transported from Florida to California for the last time on the back of its 747 transport aircraft. I let her miss school when she was in kindergarten (she's in 7th grade now-- wow has it been that long??) and we drove down there to watch it do the flyovers of downtown Houston in the far distance, KSC a couple miles away, and then come in and land at Ellington. Figured it was historic, something nobody will ever see again, and it was. Endeavour was transported on its final flight to California, and moved to a new museum in LA. It will be displayed upright as if "ready to launch" on a faux stack of SRB/ET full scale model simulators. Challenger was of course destroyed and rests at the bottom of a disused Minuteman missile silo at Cape Canaveral a couple miles south of the main launch pads at Kennedy Space Center (39A&B) that was used for the early test flights of the Minuteman missile in the early 60's. Columbia... Its remains are stored on the 16th floor of the VAB at KSC. Apollo 1's remains are stored in Langley Virginia at the CIA IIRC. Now, NASA has "ten healthy centers", which is one of their mottos and which they jealously protect funding for, even if it hurts the space programs they are supposed to be conducting and is their reason for existence. The main centers related to the manned space program is of course Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida, the Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) in Huntsville, Alabama, the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, Texas, the Michoud Assembly Facility (MAF) and the John C. Stennis Space Center (SSC), both in close proximity to New Orleans, Louisiana. The Space Shuttles were built by North American Rockwell in California, and of course landed at Edwards Air Force Base in California for the first couple years or so of the shuttle program, because the runways for it at KSC were not yet completed. The space centers mentioned perform the following functions essential to the manned space flight programs... KSC-- Vehicle final assembly and integration, moved to launch pad, and launch operations (and landing/servicing of shuttles). MSFC-- Vehicle design and testing, payload design and testing. JSC-- formerly "Manned Spacecraft Center" (prior to LBJ's death and its renaming), astronaut training center, mission control center, spacecraft design and testing, mockups and training, communications. MAF-- construction factory for Saturn V S-IC first stages, construction of large External Tanks for shuttle stack, construction of SLS core stages. SSC-- hot-fire testing of S-IC rocket stages for Saturn V, test firing rebuilt SSME shuttle main engines after rebuilds after each flight, testing of new/experimental rocket engines, testing of SLS cores/RS-25 main engines for SLS in the rocket engine test stands there. California-- construction and assembly and test firing of S-II and S-IVB stages during Apollo (at North American Aviation and Douglas Aircraft, respectively), construction and periodic refit/refurbishment of shuttle orbiters (at North American Rockwell), shuttle landings (Edwards Air Force Base), and *almost* military shuttle launches (SLC-4 at Vandenberg for polar orbit shuttle military launches, first was scheduled for the next launch after Challenger in early 1986, but was subsequently cancelled after the Challenger disaster, and no shuttle was ever launched from California). Now, my pet peeve is that their displays are SO haphazard... Strictly speaking on a "historical relevance" to display the remaining shuttles as close to their logical historical sites as possible, I would have done the following-- 1) Enterprise-- first prototype shuttle constructed at North American Rockwell in California- conducted the original Approach and Landing Tests off the back of a 747 at Edwards Air Force Base in California, was supposed to be converted for spaceflight, but was deemed too heavy and not worth the expenditure, so it never flew again (other than transport flights on 747). Currently on display on aircraft carrier in New York harbor. I would have displayed this shuttle in California where Endeavour is now, mounted atop its 747 carrier aircraft, as it was during the Approach and Landing Tests at Edwards. 2) Discovery-- the most flown orbiter, and the most historic missions, including both "return to flight" missions after the destruction of Challenger and Columbia. I would display it at Udvar-Hazy of the Smithsonian in Washington DC right where it is. 3) Atlantis-- Currently on display at KSC. I would agree, but instead of the "flying in space" payload bay doors open pose, I would have mounted it upright on a faux SRB/ET stack in "launch position", since all shuttles were launched from KSC as it was the ONLY place shuttles were launched from. 4) Endeavour-- as the orbiter built to replace Challenger after it was destroyed, I would display it at JSC in Houston, since ALL the shuttle astronauts were trained at JSC and ALL the shuttle missions were controlled from Mission Control at JSC in Houston. I would have displayed it "flying in space" with the payload bay doors open like Atlantis is currently displayed in Florida, which would make much more sense since all "on orbit" mission activities were controlled and directed and trained for at JSC IN HOUSTON... New York would have gotten nothing, since they weren't directly involved in the shuttle program and nothing of historical significance occurred there. And I CERTAINLY wouldn't have given them an orbiter to rot on top of an aircraft carrier sitting in a harbor on the ocean... As it was, Houston got nothing-- well, not directly. KSC had a "full scale model" of a shuttle orbiter at its visitor center for years... since they were getting Atlantis, they had no need for the "model" so it was transferred by barge to JSC from KSC. It sat in the east end of the parking lot behind a fence at JSC for a year or so, while the shuttle 747 transport aircraft, after having delivered all the shuttles to their "final resting places" was itself disassembled and transported in to JSC in pieces, and then reassembled next to the "Space Center Houston" visitor center, and the full-scale model of the shuttle was mounted atop it, to look like a "shuttle being transported" or set up for the Approach and Landing Tests that were conducted in California prior to the first shuttle launch. Now, this makes no "historical" sense, because Houston had practically NOTHING to do with the ALT flights, other than the fact that the astronauts lived in Houston and trained here. They weren't space flights, just flying the 747 with the shuttle on its back up to altitude, separating it by diving the 747 out from under it, and allowing the shuttle to glide down to the runway for a landing to test its airworthiness and control. Shuttles only rarely, if ever, stopped in Houston on their way between landings in California and their return to KSC for refurbishment and relaunch, or the orbiter's periodic return to California to the factories for refits of new equipment or repairs. Houston's historic role was astronaut training and mission control, not "construction, transport, and testing". So the display of the "scraps" of the shuttle program (the 747 transport aircraft and an orbiter full-scale model) makes no sense historically. The shuttle display in California also makes no sense... shuttles NEVER launched from California despite the plans for Air Force shuttle missions into polar orbit on spy missions and billions of dollars spent building SLC-4 at Vandenberg for a shuttle launching pad... the first flight out of Vandenberg was scheduled to be the next shuttle flight after Challenger, but there were serious doubts as to the suitability of the SLC-4 complex (due to acoustics which were believed to possibly be so great as to damage the shuttle, perhaps fatally, on liftoff from the pad there) for shuttle flights, and there was really little justification or need, so all the Air Force shuttle missions out of Vandenberg were scrapped. Vandenberg was ONLY capable of polar launches (otherwise the SRB's would land in the middle of Phoenix!) and those polar launches were of no use to anybody but the Air Force, so basically SLC-4 sat unused for decades and was nearly scrapped before it was converted for Delta-IV Heavy launches of spy sats into polar orbit out of Vandenberg (KSC, on the other hand, is only suitable for "equatorial" orbits that fly basically east-west near the equator. Even flying to ISS's 51.6 degree inclination orbit requires vehicles launched from there to fly northward and eastward along the Atlantic coast of the US... polar flights out of KSC would drop spent rocket stages on New York or Washington if flown northward, or on Cuba and South America if flown southward, so no polar launches occur from KSC, just as no "equatorial orbit" launches occur from Vandenberg, since equatorial or "low inclination" orbits to ISS are launched due east and would drop spent boosters or stages on the populated Southwestern States or Southern States of the US.) Since no shuttles were ever launched from California, and they're prone to earthquakes anyway, it is totally illogical to have a 100 ton orbiter standing up "ready for launch" in a museum display, hanging off the side of a stack of faux "simulated" SRB's/ET stack... it would have made EMINENTLY MORE sense to display an orbiter sitting atop the transport aircraft that flew them from the factory where they were built or Edwards where they landed back to Florida to be launched. As Enterprise was the first shuttle, built and test flown entirely in California, it should be sitting atop its carrier aircraft in California in the museum instead of rotting on an aircraft carrier in New York. That would have been a far more fitting display of it. Endeavour should have gone to Houston, logically speaking. It should have been displayed as if "flying in space" with its payload bay doors open, sitting at a jaunty angle. All the shuttle missions were directed from Mission Control in Houston, and all the astronauts trained for their missions and all the jobs they performed during those missions IN HOUSTON. SO it is only logical that the "in flight" display of a shuttle orbiter is most closely tied TO HOUSTON. The 'cheap facilities' for the Saturn V and NY's "tourist pull" led to the decision Houston wouldn't receive anything but the "scraps" of the shuttle program while NY got an orbiter to rot on their aircraft carrier, though it makes NO logical sense whatsoever in a historical sense... It'd be about like moving Gettysburg's Civil War historical military park to California or something stupid like that, despite the fact that one had ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with the other... Houston's display is scraps anyway-- there's a Mercury Redstone with a faux Mercury capsule aboard... which is nice, but makes no historical sense-- Houston's "Manned Spacecraft Center" wasn't even built and functional until the Gemini 4 mission-- all previous missions of the Mercury program and the early Gemini missions (Gemini 3 and the previous unmanned test flights) were all conducted out of "Mercury Mission Control" in a bunker adjacent to the Cape Canaveral launch complexes used for the Mercury and Gemini missions (prior to the construction of KSC for Saturn V-- even most of the Saturn IB/Apollo missions (Apollo 1, Apollo 7, Apollo 5 and other unmanned test missions of Saturn I and IB) were flown from Cape Canaveral-- the only Saturn IB launches from Kennedy Space Center were off the Saturn V pads equipped with the 'milkstool' for the manned Skylab 2, 3, and 4 missions, and Apollo/Soyuz Test Project (ASTP) prior to the pad converstions for the shuttle program. SO, Houston had *absolutely nothing* to do with the Mercury program-- it didn't even exist yet as a functioning space center. Once Mission Control came online from Gemini 4 onwards, ALL manned space missions by the US have been controlled from Houston's "Mission Control" center at JSC-- all the Gemini missions after 4, all the Apollos, and all the shuttles. YET, Houston doesn't even have a Saturn IB or Gemini-Titan in their rocket garden... what they DO have is a left over launch rig and Apollo Little Joe II test vehicle from White Sands in New Mexico, where the Apollo Little Joe II vehicle tests of the launch escape system were performed. Again, this makes little historical sense as that program was conducted entirely out of White Sands and in conjunction with MSFC, since they were the lead center on the vehicle design for Saturn V/Apollo (Apollo spacecraft was conducted out of JSC, however). There's a Saturn IB sitting out in the open in a roadside park off I-40 just south of the Alabama/Tennessee state line in Alabama, rotting away (upright with guy wires supporting it, but birds are nesting and crapping all over the thing and trees growing up around it, causing decay). Alabama already has a Saturn IB sitting in its nearby rocket garden at the US Space and Rocket Center visitor center adjacent to MSFC in nearby Huntsville, Alabama. USSRC's displays are also in bad shape (other than the Saturn V which has been restored and resides inside their beautiful "new" Davidson Center. The rockets in their "rocket garden" display are in generally poor condition and have MANY historical inaccuracies on the paint jobs (which are themselves in poor condition) and it's shocking and shameful how little care or preservation is expended on preserving these priceless historical artifacts... The various military missiles designed, constructed, or tested at "Redstone Arsenal" (predecessor/adjunct to MSFC) in the rocket garden are literally rusting away to nothing, and the space displays aren't much better off. The "Pathfinder" shuttle sits "leaned over at a jaunty angle" behind the visitor center next to "US Space Camp", up on steel support pipes-- another full-scale shuttle orbiter model, sitting atop a test version of the ET and some ASRB test casings (Advanced SRB, basically disposable lightweight SRB's designed to boost performance for the military shuttle missions to be launched from Vandenberg in California, since you get no "free boost" from Earth's rotation launching south into a polar orbit from Vandenberg like you get from launching eastwards out of KSC, so you need extra rocket power to get the same payload into polar orbit than you would into equatorial orbit). That's kind of a neat (if totally unrealistic) display, but shamefully the only remaining Shuttle/Centaur booster stage, which was being readied for testing on a mission not long after Challenger, sits nearby on it's shuttle payload bay launch cradle-- Shuttle Centaur was cancelled after Challenger-- it was sort of a death-trap anyway, because it was a liquid hydrogen stage redesign of the original Centaur upper stage used on numerous expendable unmanned rockets, which would have to be fuelled inside the shuttle payload bay on the pad just before liftoff, yet it was too heavy fully fueled for the shuttle to perform an emergency "Return to Launch Site" (RTLS) abort-- which required dumping the fuel overboard from the shuttle as it 'glided back' to the launch site for landing... nevermind the explosion hazard of a liquid hydrogen stage in the payload bay behind the astronauts... many felt that if Shuttle/Centaur had flown it would have ended up causing an accident that would probably destroy an orbiter... but the additional performance of Shuttle/Centaur was BADLY needed for the large space missions (like Galileo to Jupiter and Cassini, which was originally supposed to launch aboard a shuttle) proposed or intended to be launched on shuttles. The Shuttle/Centaur is a "balloon" stage, requiring constant pressure to maintain its structural integrity to prevent it from collapsing in on itself and destroying itself under its own weight. This is provided by a small air compressor wired up underneath it that periodically turns on to keep the stage pressurized... which sounded like it was about to fail the last time I was there and heard it running... if it fails, the Shuttle Centaur stage will collapse and be destroyed as its tanks buckle and rupture. The last time I was at USSRC (probably 3 years ago) they had moved their beautifully restored V-2 out of the main building and into the rocket garden, laying on its side on a trolley... to make room for the large travelling exhibits which come in during the tourist season and circulate among museums-- in this case, "the science of Star Wars" with tons of props and movie models and stuff like that... but it's usually "grossology" or "NASCAR" or other nonsense "fluff" displays, like what is typical at Space Center Houston... (and all the other "independent contractor" operated space program visitor centers run at the NASA space centers). It came a sudden afternoon thunderstorm (very typical of northern Alabama and the Gulf Coast in general) and when we went back outside to continue our tour of the rocket garden, water was GUSHING out of the interior of the V-2 through a seam between the upper and lower half of the outer shell (V-2's fuel tanks were "internal" with an outer sheet metal shell, not like the modern rocket designs that use the fuel tank wall as the outer aerodynamic shell of the vehicle to save weight). The sun came out, it got about 95 degrees and 100% humidity, so you can only IMAGINE how hot and humid it was inside that rocket with all that water inside it, and how much rust and corrosion that will cause... I was shocked and amazed-- V-2's are priceless historical artifacts, and this one is being left to rot outside to make room for some movie nonsense and travelling kiddie displays...  Once these things have rotted away, we'll never have them again... oh, we can build new "replicas" of the originals-- like the Saturn V full-scale model standing upright at the entrance to the visitor center at USSRC in Huntsville, which they got from a defunct Japanese theme park I understand... but it won't be "real"... not the actual, historical artifact... it'll just be a "full scale model" of the real thing, with no provenance or history behind it, just "look like the real thing". Might as well display a Polaroid of the Mona Lisa IMHO... Later! OL J R 
__________________
The X-87B Cruise Basselope-- THE ultimate weapon in the arsenal of Homeland Defence and only $52 million per round! Last edited by luke strawwalker; 02-16-2018 at 01:06 PM.
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#43
02-16-2018, 06:40 PM
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It often takes an outside (non-corporate or non-government agency) group of volunteers to really do the job the way it needs to be done. It's a similar scenario in the steam locomotive restoration community.
 Granted, it's not going to the moon hardware, but it is still a relic of a bygone age. Of course, perhaps the real sad story with the Saturns is that they didn't get to fly on 18, 19 and 20.
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#44
02-16-2018, 07:27 PM
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That was quite a wall of text Luke, but well worth the read. I agree w/ you 100%
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#45
02-20-2018, 01:06 PM
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Yes I did see the LM hanging above the dinning area. I thought it was a great building. You have got to get all three Saturn V under your belt. A great "bucket list". It would be nice to know how the different sites compare and hear about them. It is sad that these great machines were left to deteriorate. I don't know why but space vehicles just don't seem to figure very high up in historical importance in any country from what I can see. Hopefully the next generation will change that. SpaceX might be just the kick start to get everything fired up again. You never know I may yet live to see someone go to Mars!
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Normally the most advanced tech I use is a pencil.
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#47
02-25-2018, 12:16 AM
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Later! OL J R
__________________
The X-87B Cruise Basselope-- THE ultimate weapon in the arsenal of Homeland Defence and only $52 million per round!
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#48
02-25-2018, 12:31 PM
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It is often the case people only start to appreciate their old stuff when it is gone or almost too late. The fact the remaining shuttles were treated like they were (apart from the poor old battered Enterprise), with all that care and adoration is quite unique.
I read people even tried their guns on the Saturn V when it was outside.
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#50
02-25-2018, 03:06 PM
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Yeah I don't see WHY they gave the Enterprise to NYC and let them put it on the deck of an old aircraft carrier TO ROT out in the salt air, wind, rain, and storms... it was already damaged in Hurricane Sandy IIRC... Guess it just proves the right amount of money greasing the right palms can achieve anything they want no matter HOW stupid it is... Some people's kids... Later! OL J R
__________________
The X-87B Cruise Basselope-- THE ultimate weapon in the arsenal of Homeland Defence and only $52 million per round!
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