This is the tale of two vessels I visited on my recent trips to Boston and Huntsville.

This is the U.S.S. Constitution, a.k.a. "Old Ironsides", the world's oldest commissioned warship still in service and still afloat:



(The H.M.S. Victory is a fine ship with a glorious history, and is both older and still commissioned; but as the U.S. Navy is fond of pointing out, the Victory is "afloat" in concrete.)

This is not really a vessel at all:



Rather, it's a full-sized replica of the Saturn V, commissioned by the Alabama Space Science Exhibit Commission and unveiled on July 17, 1999. (Bonus points if you can tell me why that particular date.) It almost has to be a replica, because all of the vessels in this line were one-shots, and the pieces have mostly either burned up on reentry or sunk beneath the waves. Still, an actual Saturn V (one which never flew) is shown here:



Both can be seen at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center. (Actually, that photo of the real Saturn V is from my trip last year. So sue me. This year, the Saturn V is under restoration, and you can't get close enough for that angle.)

The motive power for the U.S.S. Constitution is hinted at here:



That's a shot of some of the rigging of the ship. When under way, some number of sails would be hung from those lines: more sails to catch more wind for more speed; fewer sails when scouting and otherwise traveling at a more leisurely pace, or when too-strong winds might make the sails a risk. Under full sail with the right winds, she could make 13 knots, or nearly 15 mph.

The motive power for the Saturn V was a little bit more complex. It starts with the F-1 engines:



That's just one of them. The Saturn V had five of those monsters in its first stage. If you stand next to it, you feel tiny; but that's hard to tell from a photo. So to give you a sense of scale, the folks at the Space and Rocket Center have helpfully placed picnic tables under the monument:



Those five F-1s got the Saturn V off the ground, and burned for 150 seconds. That got the vessel up to around 5,300 mph, and a height of nearly 38 miles. Then the first stage would drop off, and five J-2 engines would kick in:



A J-2 is pretty big when you first see it; but by comparison to the F-1, it's pretty tiny.

Those five J-2s would burn for 360 seconds, and then the second stage would drop off. That got the vessel up to around 15,300 mph, and a height of nearly 115 miles.

The third stage had a single J-2 engine, which would burn twice, for a total of 500 seconds. By the end of the second burn (also known as TLI, or Trans Lunar Injection), the remainder of the vessel would be traveling over 22,300 mph — fast enough to escape Earth's gravitational pull. After the Command and Service Module (CSM) docked with the Lunar Module (LM, but sometimes pronounced "lem"), the third stage would drop off. That left the CSM and LM free to go to the Moon. I didn't get any shots of a full CSM (or even a simulator); but here's the actual Apollo 16 Command Module, without the Service Module (of course):



The CSM had it's own engine, the Service Propulsion System, or SPS (not pictured here); but the main motive power for the SPS was gravity. As the CSM's velocity carried it away from Earth, the Moon's gravity grew stronger and eventually dominant; and so a primary use of the SPS was actually as a brake, slowing the SPS and the LM down enough to attain a stable Lunar orbit. Later, the SPS was used for Trans Earth Injection, breaking free from the Moon's much weaker gravity and sending the CSM back toward Earth.

When the LM cut loose from the CSM and descended to the Moon, it did so on this Descent Stage Engine:



This one was actually pretty small, maybe half my height. Of course, it was supporting a tiny fraction of the Saturn V's mass against one-sixth the gravity, so it didn't need to be nearly as large as an F-1.

Before the Apollo crews reached the Moon, some scientists speculated that the Lunar surface might be deep in dust and might trap a vessel that landed there. In hindsight, it seems like we had plenty of probe evidence and other observations to counter this theory, but it was a valid safety concern. And no one knew quite how rough the terrain might be at a landing site. There was some fear that leaving the Moon might be a lot harder than landing, because there might be no stable ground from which to launch. So in what I've always found to be the most clever engineering solution of the whole LM program, the engineers decided to have the crew bring their own launch platform with them. The LM was designed in two stages: a descent stage which would land and plant its feet on the surface; and then an ascent stage which would use the descent stage itself as a stable launch platform. Even if the descent stage landed in deep dust or was somehow damaged during landing, it would still support a launch of the ascent stage in all but the most catastrophic scenarios. I don't have details on the ascent stage engine, but it was the last major element of motive power for the Apollo missions.

I haven't found any reference for the top speed of the CSM; but it was at least 1,500 times faster than the U.S.S. Constitution. The longest voyage possible for the U.S.S. Constitution was a circumnavigation of the Earth, or something more than 25,000 miles. An Apollo crew on a Lunar mission traveled much more than ten times that far:



This is a small glimpse of the crew quarters of the U.S.S. Constitution:



Officers had it slightly better, but not much. The captain fared better still, because Rank Hath Its Privileges. 450 officers, enlisted men, Marines, and ship's boys slept in shifts in these cramped quarters. (The ship's boys were given education in academic matters and shipboard duties and a decent stipend for the day, in exchange for some vital combat duties: they were the only ones small enough to crawl into the cramped powder lockers and cannon ball stores and haul out the powder and ammunition. Some very brave soldiers won some very risky battles on the U.S.S. Constitution; and every time they fired a cannon at an enemy ship, they were able to do so because some ship's boy was on the job supporting the cannon crew.)

This is a glimpse of the "crew quarters" in the Apollo CSM:



It looks like cramped was still the rule of the day; and unlike the U.S.S. Constitution, Rank Had No Privileges when it came to living space in a CSM. (Actually, I believe this photo is from a Command Module simulator, not from the real Apollo 16 Command Module. The real thing is behind plexiglas, and all my photos of it have flash reflections right in the most inconvenient places.)

While I don't have any pictures of them, the U.S.S. Constitution had ship's boats for going ashore when port facilities weren't available.

The CSM had a ship's boat of sorts as well, i.e., the LM itself:



This was a two-man landing craft, and one of the most challenging flying experiences any aviator could face. The story of the design and construction of this craft is an inspiration to engineers everywhere, and is my favorite episode of From the Earth to the Moon. I'll never be an astronaut, and I can't really see myself as one. A space tourist or mission specialist is as close as I can imagine (and I'm not holding my breath). But I could see myself and my colleagues in every scene of this story of engineers facing near insurmountable challenges on nearly impossible deadlines. When the lead engineer says goodbye to his baby and knows it's never coming back, I choked up. (And keep an eye on the rubber balls for one of the nicest little bits of visual shorthand I've ever seen in a film.)

And on later missions, the "landing craft" itself carried a "landing craft" of sorts, the Lunar Rover:



These battery-powered vehicles could fold up and fit inside the cargo area of the LM. With a top speed of 8 mph, the rovers greatly extended the territory that astronauts could explore.

Here Seaman Rob Shaughnessy of Bellows Falls, Vermont tells us about grog:



(Seaman Shaughnessy was a most excellent tour guide, and I enjoyed his presentation immensely. He should have a fine career in public speaking if he ever decides to do so; but since he was both a fireman and an EMT before joining the U.S. Navy, I suspect he prefers a career with a little more action.) In the days of the tall ships, sailors were issued a small daily ration of rum (or other alcohol, but rum was most common). This helped boost morale and helped the men to sleep, as well as providing them with at least something safe to drink. (More on that in a moment.) But the ration was small, not enough to make a healthy, active man drunk; and so sailors got inventive, and hoarded their rations to the weekend. A week's ration was enough to get a man good and drunk; and while that may have pleased the men, it highly displeased the captain. A crew of drunk (or hung over) sailors makes a lousy fighting force (Duelist jokes notwithstanding). So our Navy borrowed a trick from the Royal Navy: the recipe for grog. This was a mixture of rum, lime juice (which also provided vitamin C, and thus helped stave off scurvy), and water. It was acceptable to drink on the day it was served; but if you hoarded it for a week, it went bad, and would make you quite ill. And so the ship's surgeon (who was also the dentist and the cook) was on orders to report any man who showed up with signs of grog-sickness, particularly on the weekends, so that the man could get extra duty assignments.

And why did the grog go bad? Well, I'm sure that the lime juice started to go a bit bad over a week; but for the real answer, Seaman Shaughnessy pointed us to the scuttlebutt:



This was the water cask; and it contained what the crew called "lively water". This was long before water purification, remember; so when the ship put in at some river mouth to refill its stores of water, the "fresh" water most assuredly had microorganisms and more living in it. And every day, the cook would go down to the stores and fill the scuttlebutt and haul it up to the gun deck. The sediments would have largely settled before the scuttlebutt was filled; but microorganisms and algae and even small fish and polliwogs and whatnot would still get into it. And by the time those organisms had had a week to grow in a nice nutrient-rich bottle of grog, well, they'd be just ripe for making a man ill.

Another thing to know about the scuttlebutt is that it was the only place on deck where the enlisted men were allowed to talk. The main deck was the domain of the captain and his officers: no one spoke except on official duties, so that the captain's orders could be more clearly heard and conveyed. And the berthing deck was always occupied by sleeping men (they had to sleep in shifts, remember) who would not appreciate a lot of idle conversation. So the scuttlebutt was the place the men gathered to talk and to gossip; and thus the term scuttlebutt entered our slang as a term for gossip. To this day, drinking fountains in the Navy are still referred to as scuttlebutts.

The final bit of dining lore that Seaman Shaughnessy shared regarded the harness cask:



The meat in the stores was kept heavily salted to preserve it; so to render it edible, each day the cook climbed down into the stores, carved off enough for the day, and put it in "fresh" water in the harness cask so that much of the salt could be soaked out of it. The resulting meat, though, was still very salty, and very tough. The sailors liked to claim it was horse meat, and to try to convince new crewmen that if they kicked over the harness cask, a horsehead would spill out, still wearing its harness.

The Space and Rocket Center did have exhibits of Apollo food, but I forgot to get a photo. Still, griping about the food is something of a military tradition, so I'm sure the Apollo astronauts did plenty of that. And the story of John Young's orange juice farts is legendary.

Make no mistake about the U.S.S. Constitution: she was a warship, pure and simple. Here's a view of some of her cannons:



There were 54 in all: 32 24 pounders, 20 32 pounders, and 2 24 pounder bow chasers. When the 32 pounders fire, they fly backward with the equivalent kinetic energy of an SUV going 30 mph. Then they're caught by the massive ropes, and they bounce around so much that the maker's crests forged into the tops of the barrels are actually imprinted into the beams above the guns. The larger guns were actually given to the U.S.A. by the British, in order to aid the Constitution's original mission: fighting piracy on the high seas. But they were given with a condition: that these guns never be used against British vessels or interests. And so, when the War of 1812 broke out, the Constitution honored that agreement, and fought only with her smaller guns. Despite that, she never lost an engagement, and won over 30 battles, including an amazing victory against superior odds in her battle with the Cyane and the Levant. And though it's habit to speak of these as the ship's battles, of course most credit must go to the fine crew, including the 312 men who died defending freedom aboard her decks. Still, the ship herself deserves some credit, along with her designer, Joshua Humphreys. The ship design was very advanced for her time, with great structural strength. And the hull was an amazing innovation for its day: in a time where double walls were common (with one wall running vertical and the other horizontal, so they could buttress each other, Mr. Humphreys designed a triple hull, with both inner and outer walls running horizontal, while the middle wall ran vertical. This by itself added more structural support; but beyond that, the middle layer was made of Southern live oak, a tree at the time found only in Georgia, USA, and so dense that it actually won't float by itself. This combination of reinforced design, triple-walled hull, and live oak was such that during her battle with H.M.S. Guerriere, British cannon shots actually bounced off the sides. One observer shouted, "Huzzah! Her sides are made of iron!", thus giving her her nickname.

While no actual declared war was involved with the Saturn V, the race to the Moon was actually one front in the Cold War with the now-defunct Soviet Union. Still, she bore no weapons, and carried the message, "We came in peace, for all mankind." Despite that global message, though, both vessels proudly declared what country gave them birth:





It makes me humble to think that these two vessels, so different in almost every respect and yet so similar in spirit, are part of our heritage. And a chance to see both in three days was not something I'll soon forget.

...just for my brother Joe, the tire man:



Somehow I expected the Shuttle to have larger tires.



That patch doesn't make me feel all that safe. (The tire looks like a Goodrich. I wonder if it's in Joe's catalog...)

So in order to keep my flight costs down (long story), I was stranded in Wichita through Sunday after my talk at Wichita Developers .NET. So I turned to 360Wichita for things to do; and what I found was the Cosmosphere in Hutchinson, Kansas: one of the finest space museums I've ever seen.

In Kansas?!?!?!?

Well, at least they have a sense of humor about it. Rather than be offended by that question, they actually printed up a small handout called "Why Hutch?" In it, they explain how Patricia Brooks Carey (a local heiress) had a passion for astronomy and organized local volunteers to build a planetarium in the Poultry Building on the Kansas State Fairgrounds. Later, they added some exhibits; and then fortunate timing led to a liaison with the Smithsonian, and thus to a full-fledged museum showcasing some major artifacts from the Apollo era and more. And then later still, they acquired a large number of artifacts from the Soviet programs as well. Almost half a world away from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, the Cosmosphere has one of the largest collections of Soviet space hardware anywhere. As the handout wraps up:

"It all goes to show, with vision, timing and a chicken coop, anything is possible. You can even build a space museum in Kansas."

Since I didn't know I would be sightseeing on this trip, I didn't bring the camera. The best I could do is the camera in my iPaq; and I'm still learning how to use that without a lot of blurring. So the shots I got weren't as good as I would've liked. What you see below are the best ones.

As you approach the building (it's not in the Poultry Building any more), it doesn't look much different from any typical college building:



Except, of course, for the small detail of a Redstone rocket out front:



And then as you approach the entrance, you see a bronze statue of Gene Cernan, last man on the Moon (to date):



And then you know that there's something special here. Once inside, even before you get to the main exhibit area, you see two space probes:



This is a replica of the Surveyor, a probe sent to the Moon to study surface conditions in advance of the Lunar landings. On the Apollo 12 mission, Commander Pete Conrad and LM Pilot Alan Bean landed within a short walk of the real Surveyor. They took samples from it to help study how the metal had been affected by years on the Lunar surface. (I wish I had a better picture, but this was the best I got. Gotta learn to hold the iPaq still long enough for it to autofocus. No quick snaps with the iPaq!)



This is a replica of the Viking, a probe sent to Mars. No one has visited it for samples. Yet.

They also had two rocket engines:



These are the H-1 (top) and the RL-10 (bottom). Both were used on various pre-Apollo rockets, though I can't recall which ones.



But that was all in the lobby area. From there, I descended the stairs to the main exhibit area. The two most interesting things about the Cosmosphere are that the exhibits are mostly underground, so space is limited; and yet they use that limited space very effectively, organizing the exhibits by themes and eras over time. Most historical museums do this to some extent; but I thought the Cosmosphere did an excellent job of this. Their use of color and space gave a definite feeling of transition as I walked from one era to another. Places like the U.S. Space and Rocket Center may have more artifacts (after all, it's hard to top a Saturn V); but the Cosmosphere presents a better historical experience. Unfortunately, that experience would be hard to capture even with the best camera. It's not something you can easily capture in a snapshot. You have to actually walk through it to get the effect.

One way in which their historical perspective is more extensive is in their coverage of the German rocket program. The Space and Rocket Center doesn't ignore this history, by any means; but perhaps because of local sensibilities (von Braun and his German team settled in the Huntsville area, and many of their families can still be found there today), it's treated relatively briefly. The Cosmosphere has a lot of detail on the V-2 program, including this exhibit:





The plaque tells how over 10,000 slave laborers died on the V-2 program — more than double the number of people killed by the rocket attacks. The Cosmosphere exhibit makes very clear how evil the Nazi regime was. It makes you think how important it is that we never let that happen again.

Here's another view of a V-2:



Next, they showed artifacts and information from the earliest days of the space race, days that were dominated by Soviet launches:



This somewhat fuzzy image is a replica of Sputnik, the first artificial satellite in orbit. The exhibit tells of von Braun's frustration at the Soviets' success, because he felt the American program was ready to launch sooner. He felt that all we lacked was vision and nerve; but he wasn't calling all of the shots.



This is a cutaway model of the Soviet capsule that launched Laika, first dog in space — before we had yet launched a single satellite. Actually, Laika was the first living creature of any kind in space, and was launched to help the Soviets measure the effects of launch and weightlessness on a living creature. (Sadly, they had no recovery mechanism at that time, so Laika's life was sacrificed in the experiment.)

So while the Soviets were launching a satellite and then a capsule with a live animal, the best we could do was this:



That's a replica of the Vanguard, a grapefruit sized satellite with short little communication antennae. By contrast, the Sputnik was well larger than a basketball, and its antennae were more than eight feet long. Yet even with such a small ambition, we failed: the Vanguard's launch vehicle blew up just after liftoff, and the satellite was lost.

But weren't completely without successes in that era. While we weren't making much headway in the launch area, we were making great strides in propulsion, as these exhibits showed:



This is one of the Bell X-1 Rocket Planes, such as Chuck Yeager flew when he broke the sound barrier for the first time. (Another test pilot from the X-1 program would go on to some acclaim, a young man named Neil Armstrong.)



This is a rocket sled, used for ground-based testing of rocket engines and also for tests of how humans could stand up to high acceleration.

Yet despite these successes, the big game in the Cold War was in space; and we were losing there. One reason was the RD-107 or "Red Thunder" rocket engines:



These were the workhorses of the early Soviet launches; and at the time, we had nothing to match them. These were used for many purposes, including launching the first manned probe, the Voskod:



The Cosmosphere personified the space race with statues of two men:



This is Nikita Krushchev, the Soviet Premier who boasted, "We will bury you. Our rockets could hit a fly over the United States."



And this is President John F. Kennedy, the man who decided, "That's not gonna happen." Or to quote him exactly:

We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too. It is for these reasons that I regard the decision last year to shift our efforts in space from low to high gear as among the most important decisions that will be made during my incumbency in the Office of the Presidency.

And through his inspiration, we accepted the challenge, we didn't postpone it, and we won. And step one of that success was Project Mercury:



This is an engne and a fuel sphere from the Mercury Atlas, the vessel that replaced the Redstone (above) for Project Mercury. The Redstone was used for sub-orbital flights; but when it came time to launch John Glenn to become the first American in orbit, it was the Atlas that did the job. (I have a photo of a Mercury capsule replica from the Cosmosphere, but it's too blurry to show here.)

Project Mercury got Americans to orbit; but it was on Project Gemini that we launched teams of two, with a plan to practice and master vital skills for the Lunar missions: rendezvous, docking, orbital navigation, and space walks. And for its Project Gemini exhibits, the Cosmosphere pulls out all the stops. Welcome to Launch Complex 19:



This is an actual Titan launch facility, transplanted to the Cosmosphere. When you walk into it (or actually out to it, since it's outside, you're transported back in time and space to an actual Gemini Titan launch. Hidden speakers play back the actual recorded sounds from the launch prep, so you're immediately met with the rumble of engines and systems coming on line. And then you look up:











And here's a close-up of the engines:



And then, if you're patient, and sit through all the holds and the final countdown, the launch itself rumbles over you. It's all realistic enough that you can imagine the flames erupting around you. That's not a good image for the faint of heart!

Back inside, I got a rather blurry photo of a Gemini capsule:



And after Gemini, of course, came Apollo. But I'll save those photos for a later post. I'm off to visit my aunt and uncle!

In my post on my visit to the Cosmosphere, I oversimplified the timeline from Mercury to Apollo. Serves me right for working from memory. Since then, I've had a chance to refresh my failing memory through rereading Apollo by Charles Murray and Catherine Bly Cox.

I say rereading; but in a sense, this is reading anew. I own a copy of the first edition of this book, and have read it three times. I find it to be without a doubt the most thorough history of Apollo that's available. Why? Because where other fine books — such as Chaikin's most excellent A Man on the Moon — focus primarily on the astronauts, this book is first and foremost about the engineers and managers who made the flights possible. I don't want to disparage the work the astronauts did. Indeed, this book (like many others) makes clear that their work began years before they climbed into their spacecraft, and involved plenty of engineering on the ships themselves, along with their training. I have the utmost respect for the astronauts; but as I wrote elsewhere, I'm not the astronaut type. But these engineers... Ah, now these are my people, my inspirations... These are the people whose example moves me to try to do better in my day-to-day work. Whenever my work seems tough, I look at what they did, and say, "No, my job really isn't rocket science. I can do this."

And Murray and Cox's book was the one that made me really appreciate the intellect and discipline and creativity and ingenuity that made Apollo happen. And so, when I saw the new edition with its colorful new cover at the Cosmosphere gift store, I couldn't resist. Mr. Murray had already told me (in private email) that there wasn't much new in this edition, and he couldn't honestly recommend buying a new copy. (So why a second edition? As they explain in the new foreword, the book has become very popular since the first edition went out of print, and they get lots of requests for it. With good reason, I might add.) But fortunately for their bank account, I'm weak. I'm rereading the book now, and finding it even better than I remembered it. It appears that Murray and Cox may have gone the self-publishing route on this edition, since it's published by their own South Mountain Books. I looked into self-publishing for some of our course materials a few years back. Judging by this book, the technology has improved. The quality of the printing is very good; and as I indicated, the new cover is stunning. The only major change from the first edition is that the photos in this edition aren't on glossy paper. That actually makes for a stronger binding, I believe; but it makes it harder to browse to the pictures, since the picture pages are just like all the other pages.

Anyway... Apollo explains the political history of the program very well. It tells how President Kennedy inherited a space program he really didn't want (though Vice-President Johnsn was a strong supporter), including Project Mercury; and then it tells how, after Soviet space triumphs and the Bay of Pigs debacle, President Kennedy needed a symbol of success. And so he turned to the very space program he once disdained, and said: "What can you give me?" And the managers named a number of conservative, very attainable goals; but none of them was inspiring, and none would demonstrate superiority to the Soviets.

And then they suggested the more extreme goal: "We could go to the Moon." And that grabbed President Kennedy's imagination; and that's what he promised us and the world that we were going to do.

Now from a geopolitical and domestic political position, that proclamation was brilliant: a bold challenge to the Soviets and a bold challenge to the American people. Yet from a technical perspective, it might have proven a horrible misstep. To this day, many in the space travel business will argue that a space station should have been our first goal before the Moon, and that we would have been much farther along in space today if we had followed that course; and indeed, some still pressed for that approach. But with President Kennedy's assassination, Project Apollo took on the mantle of Legacy to a beloved President; and Vice-President Johnson, now succeeded to President, had been NASA's strongest supporter in the Kennedy administration, and was determined to see the Legacy through. That's a combination of historical forces that no one could withstand.

(In a bit of alternate history speculation, I have to wonder what would've happened to Apollo and NASA had President Kennedy lived? Would NASA have persuaded him to let them follow the more cautious approach? Would we have a permanent space colony today, maybe even including settlers on Mars? Or would his attention have lagged as Vietnam and other problems rose? Would a Congress less in awe of his memory have been more willing to cut NASA's funding? Would we even today be waiting for that first footprint on the Moon? I can see a case for either possibility; but we're stuck with the future we have, not the might have beens.)

So Apollo tells of the wrap-up of Project Mercury (the effort to get Americans in orbit), and also of the Gemini program (the effort to learn how to maneuver and work and rendezvous in space); but both are told only briefly and peripherally. As the title suggests, the focus here is all on Apollo. The book is divided into Books:

• Book One, Gathering, tells of the formation of NASA, and of the history of the decision to go to the Moon (as above, only with a lot more history and detail).


• Book Two, Building, tells of the design and construction of the Saturn V, culminating in the story of the first unmanned launch. And along the way, it tells of The Fire. All NASA histories have this in common: there's before The Fire, and after The Fire; and those are two different stories, and even a casual reader can tell. NASA changed in that event. In facing death, NASA had to grow up in some necessary but sad ways. The Can Do people learned that sometimes they couldn't.


• Book Three, Flying, tells the history of the flight controllers in Mission Control, and how they worked with the astronauts during the Apollo missions. And it's here that the real engineering all comes together. As a computer geek, I empathize with these earnest young men glued to their monitors, each watching dozens of simultaneous data points and looking for some key discrepancy that might affect the mission. The book's descriptions of this work are the closest literary equivalent I've ever seen to what it's like to chase down a really ephemeral bug in a mountain of code... except that my bugs usually don't have the lives of three astronauts hanging in the balance... and I usually have more than twenty seconds in which to analyze the data... and I don't have to decide whether to scrub the most-watched mission in history based only on my possibly buggy code... and I don't have to worry about lightning striking my machines and resetting everything right in the middle of the most critical operations... and I don't have to worry about a fuel cell exploding and putting the entire organization into hyper-overdrive. Murray and Cox explore each of these incidents in depth, and they really make me feel the tension of being in the MOCR, making life-and-death decisions based on instinct, experience, and ceaseless drills. They also give what I believe to be the definitive explanations for The Fire and the Apollo 13 accident, as well as a blow-by-blow description of the Apollo 12 lightning strike that made my hair stand on end.

After this, I may go reread Chaikin. I also have EECOM Sy Liebergott's biography (a signed copy picked up at the Cosmosphere) to read. And I may go reread Lost Moon. But this will always be the book that revitalized my childhood love of space travel and made it relevant to me in my career today. For that alone, I would recommend it; but more than that, it's just a fascinating view of Apollo that's usually seen only in the background. That makes it even more valuable to the space fanatic.

Somewhat belatedly continuing the story of my visit to the Cosmosphere...



This is the harness that carried Enos, the first chimpanzee to orbit the Earth.









At the Cosmosphere, they have a LM mock-up where you can get quite close (closer than I got in Huntsville).





You can also get pretty close to their lunar rover.



Here's a sort of diorama of two Apollo Lunar suits in front of a lunar rover.



This is a docking probe, used to connect two spacecraft together. In all my reading, I had never known how these worked. Looking at the probe close up, I could get a little better view of how collapsing the "arms" inside the probe would trigger the docking latches. There's still something I'm missing, but it made more sense after I saw this.





Here are a couple of views inside a LM trainer.







Here are three views of the Apollo 13 Command Module, Odyssey.



Here's an unfortunately fuzzy shot of a fuel cell like the one that exploded during the Apollo 13 mission.



Here's Odyssey's heat shield, after it has done its work of keeping the crew safe from reentry heat.





Here's a mockup of the Soviet Lunokhod lunar probe.











This is a long string of pictures from an Apollo-Soyuz mock-up.



This is the lab where they perform restoration on the artifacts.

Well, that's enough for now. With luck, I'll have pictures of three more Command Modules in the next two weeks. Details later.

So quite by accident, I ended up visiting the Apollo 13 and Apollo 16 Command Modules. And next week, thanks to an unexpected .NET BootCamp gig in Orlando, I'll get a chance to visit the Kennedy Space Center (where the Apollo-Soyuz Command Module is located) and the United States Astronaut Hall of Fame (where Apollo 14 is located).

And that led me to wonder where the various Command Modules are today; and that led me to this site, which tells where to find all sorts of American spacecraft. And that plus Microsoft MapPoint led me to produce this map (warning: large download):



The dark blue triangles represent Apollo Command Modules. (Not shown: Apollo 10, found at the Science Museum in London, England.) The light blue triangles represent Apollo Command Modules that I have visited:

• Apollo 8, at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. I haven't been there in two decades, so I don't have any digital photos to post. But I've seen it.


• Apollo 9, now at the San Diego Aerospace Museum, but formerly at the now-defunct Michigan Space and Science Center. I used to make side trips there whenever my travels across the state allowed, so that I could gaze on Apollo 9 and remind myself that my job's not rocket science. But again, that was before I had digital photo capability.


• Apollo 13, at the Cosmosphere in Hutchinson.


• Apollo 16, at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville.


• Apollo-Soyuz, at the Kennedy Space Center. Sandy and I went there during one day of our honeymoon. Again, that was long before digital photos. But we were there!

And then I realized: I have visited five out of fifteen Command Modules (sixteen, if you count the test module in Seattle, listed here). And that began to sound suspiciously like a quest: to visit or revisit them all, and get a complete set of photos posted here on my blog.

So imagine my delight when I realized that I was speaking in Dallas this week, and that the Apollo 7 Command Module is located at the Frontiers of Flight Museum at Love Field, a museum dedicated specifically to ground-breaking aircraft that set the course for aircraft to follow. I made sure to squeeze time into my schedule for a visit, so that I could convert one of those triangles from dark blue to light blue. The photos that follow are the results.

Let's start with the star of the show. As you enter, you see Apollo 7 from the rear:



Then you come around the side, and see the open hatch:



And then you climb steps for the front view:



The Apollo 7 Command Module fits the mission of the museum well, since it was the first manned launch of a Command Module. This is also the first Command Module I've seen where it was easy to see the hatch interior:



And of course, there's the obligatory interior shot (behind plexiglass, as always):



Apollo 7 was not the only Apollo-era memorabilia at the museum. Here's Don Eisele's spacesuit:



Here are Charlie Duke's gloves:



In the background, you can also see one of the dread urine collector packs. Here are some other pieces of Apollo gear:



Here's a pressure chamber used in Skylab to test how astronauts' lower extremities behaved in various pressures and zero gravity:



Here's a Skylab exercise bike, used to test how astronauts systems behaved under exertion in space:



And here's a Skylab Experiment Support cabinet:



From what I could tell, the top part of the cabinet contained slots into which various powered modules could be plugged for various experiments. The bottom part looked like it contained drawers for supplies for the experiments.

Near Apollo 7, they had a very small movie theater showing Apollo footage. That also held a tiny chunk of Moon rock:



And they had a roughly three-foot model of a LM:



I'm so jealous!

Near the theater, they had exhibits from Beal Aerospace's new developments in lifting vehicles and engines, many of which are being manufactured or tested in the area. Here'a a scale model of the BA-2 launch vehicle:



And here's a (large) description:



Here's a combustion chamber and nozzle from one of their BA-810 engines:



And here's a (large) description of the engine:



And here's part of their PR material (again, large):



Near the Beal display is a Regulus II cruise missile:



I don't think I ever realized how large a cruise missile is, nor how much like an airplane it is. I guess that's the point: rather than following a ballistic arc, it cruises to the target like a plane.

And in keeping with my tradition ("Always include a butt shot of the rocket"), here's a butt shot of the Regulus II:



Here's a Huey helicopter:



And here's an F-16 fighter, famed for still today beating aircraft that are 30 years newer:



An Airman I know works on the explosive ejection seat mechanisms for fighters. He should appreciate this history of ejection seats:











Here's an A-7 Corsair II:



Here's a Crusader RF-G:



And here's some plane:



And here's some other plane (I think it might've been the "Sopwith Pup"):



There were more details about those last two planes, and a lot of other exhibits as well; but my camera batteries were failing. And besides, I wanted to get back to my hotel and off the roads. Dallas was starting to do this:



Man, a little glare ice all over the place, and these Texans just forget how to drive...

Update: I'm a little disappointed. I've visited Atlanta, Cleveland, Dayton, Seattle, and the Pensacola region, and I never realized there were command modules nearby. Those could have put me up to eleven, twelve after next week. I'll have to try to correct those mistakes.

And I have no idea how I'll find an excuse to get to London...

...Kennedy Space Center. Because I can (T-Mobile willing).

Here's just a quick photo:



The hand in the photo is mine (identifiable by my wedding ring). And the black wedge shape I'm touching? That's a Moon rock.

Yes, I touched the Moon today.

(Well, actually, the rock is under a very thin layer of plastic; but that's still close enough for me.) Update: Further research, while not conclusive, indicates that you get to touch the actual rock. It just happens to have a rather smooth surface.

More later.

Here are more photos from my visit to the Kennedy Space Center. This visit coincided with my completion of Apollo, so my whole brain was prepped for the experience.

Here's a peek at the Rocket Garden as you approach the Visitor Center:



If you want to take one of the special tours (NASA Up-Close and Cape Canaveral: Then & Now), you're strongly encouraged to make reservations in advance. I made a reservation for NASA Up Close; and thanks to some navigation difficulties (I programmed my Hertz Never-Lost for the KSC Federal Credit Union, not KSC itself), I arrived just in time to start the tour. Our guide for the day was Don Garretson:



Don started his career in the oil business, specializing in fluid flows, gas detection, and related instrumentation. That led him to a job with the KSC engineering staff working on gas detection, containment, and transfer during construction of various facilities such as the ISS preparation buildings. Once those facilities were complete, NASA cut back on contract engineers in those areas. So Don found a job as a KSC tour guide. He's very knowledgeable and personable, and provides a great tour.

There was one down side to the tour:



I have mentioned on other occasions how much I loathe buses. Well, for this tour, I just had to put up with the bus.

For reference on the tour, here's a map of KSC (from this site):



As we pulled out of the Visitor Center, Don pointed out this:



That building you see there is the Vehicle Assembly Building, or more commonly known as just the VAB. As Don pointed out, it only looks small in this picture because of how far away it is: 5 miles. It's actually the third-largest building in the USA by volume, and has the tallest single storey anywhere. We'll see a lot more of the VAB in later photos.

Don also pointed out some other buildings. Here's the KSC Headquarters:



And here are some shots of the Operations and Checkout building (O&C), where spacrecraft modules are checked out before assembly, and where astronauts stay immediately before and after a flight:







If you look closely at the second storey of that last shot, you'll see the Door to Nowhere: a door with no stairs leading up to it. Beyond that door is the O&C clinic. After a lengthy Shuttle mission or especially an ISS mission, astronauts sometimes are in no shape to walk. They may have trouble with balance, or they may have weakened muscles and bones. The carrier that takes them from the Shuttle landing strip to the O&C is designed to lift stretchers straight up to the Door to Nowhere and into the clinic without the astronauts ever having to get up.

Our first stop on the tour was a viewing stand where visitors can sit on bleachers and look across the water to various prep launch facilities:



The left-most building is devoted to a new approach. In the traditional prep-and-launch, the rocket and its payload (collectively known as "the stack" are assembled in a building and the slowly, carefully hauled out to a launch platform. In this new facility, the stack is assembled, and then the building is moved away. The stack remains motionless, so there's no chance of anything being dislodged in transit. As Don explained it, this can reduce prep time from months to hours.

Here's a shot of the VAB from the same bleachers:



Our next stop was a preparation center for elements of the International Space Station (ISS). We couldn't photograph the modules themselves, not for security reasons, but rather to avoid a hazard: the fire suppression systems in the prep rooms might interpret camera flashes as a fire, and then drench and ruin a lot of very expensive equipment. While we were there, they were preparing the three cargo modules used to haul supplies to the ISS and haul garbage back. These are named Leonardo, Raphael, and Donatello — no, not for the Ninja Turtels, for the Italian painters. The cargo modules are made by Italy as part of their contribution to the ISS. Don told the story of how, when Raphael first came down with a load of garbage, the stench was so bad that the workers refused to go in. After sealing it up with charcoal pellets for a week, it was finally tolerable, and they could finish the clean-up.

While the ISS components could not be photographed, the ISS center included a visitor center with models and mock-ups. Here's an ISS spacesuit:



Here's a model of Skylab, the first space station:



And here's a model of Mir, the second space station.



And finally, here's a model of the ISS itself:



Here's a model of Canada's contribution: a robotic arm used for moving modules and cargo containers. I'm not sure this name is official, but I've heard it called the Canadarm:



Here's a mock-up of one of the Habitat modules:



Inside the Habitat module, here are a restroom, a shower, and a sleeping chamber:







I never figured out what the NOD module was, but here it is:



And inside, you can see that the ISS is a luxury condo as spacecraft go:



(If you don't believe me, jump ahead to the photos of the interiors of the Mercury and Apollo capsules.)

I didn't get an exterior shot of the Lab module (and frankly, they all look kinda the same from outside); but here's the gasmap, one of the experiments in the Lab:



Next, the bus took us on a drive around the VAB:



Now the word for the VAB is big; but no picture can possibly convey just how big it is. To try to give you some hint of the size: each stripe in that flag on the side is wider than the bus we were riding.

Here are the big doors used for taking spacecraft out for launch:



Again, the word is big. The Statue of Liberty could fit comfortably through those doors. A fully ready Saturn V stack with an Apollo CSM and an escape tower, though, came within 5 feet of the top of the doors.

So how would you move that massive Saturn V stack to the launch pad? That's where the crawler carrier comes in:



The crawler carrier is a massive tracked vehicle with the surface area of a baseball diamond. Moving at a top speed that's about as fast as a leisurely walk, it would haul the Saturn V out, slowly but surely, to the Pad 39 complex. (More on that below.) Today, it serves the same purpose for Space Shuttles, hauling each one out atop the Shuttle launch platform:



This is much more than a platform: it's really a small building, complete with offices and machine shops. The crawler carrier slides under it, lifts it up, and carries it into the VAB. There a crane lifts the orbiter and the external tank and the booster engines into place, so that workers can attach them. The two pylon-like buildings on top of the platform help stabilize the orbiter's tail.

But before the orbiter can be placed on the launch platform, it has to be prepped in one of the three Shuttle "garages". Here's the door into one:



Notice the door has a notch in the top to allow for the orbiter's tail fin.

Once the orbiter and the tank and the boosters are assembled, the crawler carrier pulls them out along this path:



The two lanes allow for the two sets of treads. The lanes are not gravel, but rather Tennessee River Rock from Alabama. (Hey, it was funny when Don said it!) This rock is chosen because of its small round size and hardness, but especially because it is pretty much immune to sparking under compression. In the Apollo days, sparks might be a problem, but not too big of a problem: the Saturn V engines used liquid fuel (kerosene and liquid oxygen), and were fueled up while on the launch pad. The Shuttle orbiter also uses liquid fuel; but the external boosters are solid fuel rockets. That means that they're fully fueled and ready to ignite as the Shuttle goes down the path. A stray spark at the wrong moment could lead to a fire; and that could lead to a real disaster.

After the VAB, the bus took us out to a photo stand on the Pad 39 complex. There we could see the two launch pads used for the Apollo launches as well as almost every manned NASA launch. (Unmanned rockets usually launch from the Air Force's facilities at Cape Canaveral.) Here's Pad 39A, from which Columbia launched on both her first and last flights:



And here's Pad 39B, from which Challenger launched on her last flight:



That shot of Pad 39B was a close-up as we drove past to our next stop, the Space Shuttle landing strip. Further along, we passed the Media Center where reporters and camera crews set up to cover missions:



And then we arrived at the Space Shuttle landing strip:



This is another place where a picture just can't capture the immensity. That landing strip is 15,000 feet long, making it one of the largest in the world.

Here's the traffic control tower for the landing strip:



Along the way to our last stop, we passed what looked like a futuristic junk yard:



What it actually is is what my buddy Tom Lavey would call a bunch of giant test shims. These pieces of "junk" are actually mock-ups of various fittings and assemblies from the launch pads and elsewhere. When engineers are working on new systems that have to integrate with these fittings and assemblies, they can bring their equipment here and test it on the test fittings first, rather than waiting for time on the actual launch pad and possibly wasting a lot of time. While it may sound funny to think about having the wrong sized parts at launch day, NASA knows it's not funny at all. As Murray and Cox explain in Apollo, the heat shield on the very first Mecury test capsule turned out to be larger than the missile, and had to be carved down to fit, right on the launch pad. It's better to learn that sort of thing before launch day.

Our last stop on the tour was the Saturn V Center. The Saturn V at KSC used to be outside; but when weather began to take its toll, NASA built a special exhibit center and then moved the rocket inside and refurbished it. You enter the Saturn V Center through a small stand-up movie theater which introduces you to the Apollo program. Then from there, you move into the actual Apollo Launch Control room:



There they present a complex multimedia presentation of the last three minutes of an Apollo launch. As recorded voices from the various comm loops play over the speakers, each console is spotlighted when the corresponding voice is on the loops. Meanwhile, screens overhead show video from the various cameras: Launch Control, the launch pad, and elsewhere. The presentation ends with the building-shaking sound of the Saturn V launch. And then the doors open, and they let you in to see the Saturn V itself. We'll start with my traditional rocket butt shot:



Those five F-1 engines combined to produce 7.5 million pounds of thrust; and yet as powerful as they were, they were also delicately gimballed, so that they could pivot in different directions to control the angle of thrust. Growing up, I would see film of the engines, and I always thought I was only imagining that things that big and powerful were moving; but it was no illusion.

Here's a close-up of the plumbing for one F-1 engine:



Here's a length-wise view from Stage II forward:



And here are the five J-2 engines of Stage II, as well as Stage II itself:





Here's a length-wise view from Stage III forward:



And here's the single J-2 engine of Stage III, as well as Stage III itself:





Here's an Instrumentation Unit that sat between two stages and provided cameras and other sensors:



Here's the Service Module:



Note the spherical tanks, which I believe contained H2, O2, and water.

Here's the Command Module and the escape tower (the rocket and tower which would fling the Command Module to safety in the case of an emergency before launch or early in the launch):



And here's a length-wise shot from the nose backward:



They have a second Command Module and Service Module (collectively, Command and Service Module, or CSM) on the ground beneath the nose of the Saturn V:



I think that the Command Module here is the actual CM from the Apollo-Soyuz mission:



It's supposed to be at the Saturn V Center, and I didn't see it anywhere else. Also, this CM was sealed in plexiglass, something they usually reserve for actual flight articles:



But I didn't see every sign, and I never saw a sign that identified this Command Module, so I can't be certain. (I'll verify this on my next trip.)

Here's another angle on this Command Module:



And here's a rare opportunity, a butt shot of the Service Propulsion System or SPS, the main engine of the CSM:



And here's an even more rare butt shot:



That's the Descent Engine of an actual Lunar Module (or LM, pronounced "LEM"). Not a mock-up or a tester, but a real LM. Most of the real LMs went on missions, and were left in space. Those that went to the Moon left their Descent Stages there, while their Ascent Stages usually were crashed into the Moon to gather seismic data. Other Ascent Stages burned up in the atmosphere. One went into a solar orbit.

But this LM never flew. It was commissioned and built for the Apollo 15 mission; but then they redesigned the LM to carry the Lunar Rover, and this LM no longer fit the spec. And so now it hangs from the ceiling in the Saturn V Center:



Here's a model of a LM in the adapter stage of a Saturn V:



And speaking of the Lunar Rover, there was one parked near the Saturn V:





And nearby is a replica of an Apollo spacesuit:



And near the nose of the Saturn V was the Moon rock I showed in my previous post:



Here's a description of the Moon rock:



Also near the nose was this van used to carry the astronauts out to the launch pad:



And there was also another multimedia theater which showed movies of the actual landing footage from Apollo 11. And then, at just the right moment, they switched from movies to stage performance, dropping a replica LM down to a simulated Moonscape. It came out of nowhere and was a very effective special effect. Then they showed movies of Armstrong and Aldrin exploring the Moon; and at just the right moment, the replica Ascent Stage took off back into the sky. It was awesome (but not quite authentic: during the actual Apollo 11 ascent, the exhaust from the Ascent Engine actually knocked over the American flag that Armstrong and Aldrin had planted; but it stayed standing in this presentation).

A different bus took us back to the Visitor Center; but before I discuss that, there are a couple of miscellaneous shots from the tour. Don was sure to point out several times that most of KSC (130,000 acres out of 140,000) is a wildlife refuge. In particular, he liked to point out the alligators, from the safety of a moving bus. I wasn't fast enough to get many alligator shots, but this was the best one:



And here were some birds:



Because the waters around KSC are home to manatees, outboard motors are severely restricted; but air boats are common:



Back at the Visitor Center, the first place I went was the Rocket Garden. Here's a Redstone:



Here's an Atlas:



And here's an Atlas with an Agena rocket attached:



Here's a Titan:



Here's a J-2 engine:



And here's an F-1 engine:



Here's an actual Saturn V gantry, which took the astronauts from the launch tower to the White Room and then into the Command Module:



You could walk this (safely on the ground) into the White Room and then look inside a Command Module mock-up:



And here's a Saturn I:



It was held in reserve as a possible lifeboat for Skylab, but was never needed.

After the Rocket Garden, I went to the Exploration in the New Millenium pavillion, where they have exhibits on past, present, and future missions beyond the Moon. Here's a mock-up of the Viking probe on Mars:



And here's a mock-up of the Cassini-Huygens probe that explored Saturn:



After that, I waited for the last Astronaut Encounter of the day. This guy didn't seem too impressed:



"He flew. Big deal. I've been doing that since I left the nest!"

Finally, astronaut John Fabian appeared and spoke to the audience:



Colonel Fabian was in Air Force ROTC at Washington State University, and then served as a combat pilot, with 96 missions to his credit. He was a Mission Specialist on STS 7 (Sally Ride's first mission) and STS 51G (where he served alongside Sultan Salman Abdulaziz Al-Saud). After his talk, he posed for photos:



By that point, it was almost closing time, so I missed out on this:



That's a full-sized Shuttle mock-up, in an area of the Visitor Center that I never got to. But fear not, Shuttle fans! I'll have more photos. I'll be back Saturday, including a reservation for the Cape Canaveral: Then & Now tour. (And if I still haven't got all the photos and info I need, I can spare almost half a day there Sunday.)

But just because KSC was closing didn't mean my day was done. The Astronaut Hall of Fame (just across the bridge to the mainland) stays open 90 minutes later. 90 minutes isn't really enough there, but it's a start. Here's the entrance:



And here's the dedication:



And when you walk in the door, the first thing you see is Alan Shepard, first American in space, cast in bronze:



And behind that is a tremendously large mural of an astronaut reaching for the stars:



But that's not just a mural. The signature at the bottom reads Alan Bean, the fourth man to walk on the Moon. Since his retirement in 1981, Captain Bean has made his career as one of the preeminent space artists in the world.

Beyond the turnstyle, you'll find actual Mission Control consoles from Project Mercury:



As well as an actual Project Mercury spacesuit:



But those are just lead-ups to this:



That's the Sigma-7, the Mercury capsule flown by Wally Schirra. Here's an interior shot:



But that's not the only hardware to be found at the Hall of Fame. Here's my main goal for this visit:



That's the Apollo 14 Command Module, flown by Alan Shepard, Stu Roosa, and Ed Mitchell, completing the mission to the Fra Mauro highlands that was interrupted by the Apollo 13 disaster. Here's an interior shot:



And here's a shot of the hatch:



Spacesuits evolved from the Mercury era. This intermediate stage was nicknamed the Grasshopper:



By contrast, this is an exhibit of flight helmets worn by aviators who went on to be Hall of Fame astronauts:



Well, that's a start. Look for more photos after my return visit Saturday.