Overflow's Great Thread of NASA Knowledge

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And in Seattle, the full-size space shuttle mockup opening to public on Saturday.

It is not every day you get to stand inside the payload bay of a space shuttle, but that is the experience now awaiting visitors at The Museum of Flight in Seattle.

Beginning Saturday (Nov. 10), guests to the Washington state museum's Charles Simonyi Space Gallery will come nose-to-nose with the Full Fuselage Trainer (FFT), a full size shuttle mockup that was in use for three decades by the more than 350 astronauts who flew on the now retired orbiters.

"We do not miss an opportunity to tell people that this is the one thing every single space shuttle crew member had in common," Dan Hagedorn, senior curator at the Museum of Flight, told collectSPACE.com during a tour of the FFT.

NASA's only full-length shuttle trainer, construction of the FFT began in 1974 at Johnson Space Center in Houston. During its 35 years in service, it was used for a multitude of purposes, ranging from egress training to familiarizing astronauts with the lighting conditions in the 60-foot long (18 meters) cargo bay.

Now, with the shuttle program over and the space-flown orbiters delivered to museums, the FFT is about to start serving its new role: teaching the public about how NASA readied its crews for launch and how that experience will lead in the future to missions out into the solar system.

"It's sort of a clunky analogy but the whole 'one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind' — the astronauts individually prepared to go to space here [in the FFT], the shuttle has helped prepare mankind with the knowledge of what might take for longer steps into the solar system," exhibit developer Geoff Nunn said.

Static shuttle

Made almost entirely out of plywood, the Full Fuselage Trainer wasn't designed to travel (though its nose section did once crash back to Earth, when, decades ago, cranes being used in Houston to change its orientation failed and the mockup fell). To move it to Seattle, the trainer was segmented, shrink-wrapped and then shipped on NASA's bulbous Super Guppy cargo aircraft.

"I guess you could say it did fly once, on board the Super Guppy," Hagedorn said.

The FFT survived the trip with minimal damage, needing only a few paint touchups. But to make it easier and more accessible for visitors, museum curators chose to replace its original aft section with a new build, gaining a theater and larger access way to the payload bay in the process.

Following the opening ceremony on Saturday, guests will be able to ascend the trainer's new steps and tour through the open payload bay.

"We have general access into the payload bay, which is included with an admissions ticket," said Nunn. "You can wander into the payload bay and look around."

Looking up, visitors will see an engineering mockup of an Inertial Upper Stage (IUS), a rocket booster like what was used to thrust NASA's Galileo probe toward Jupiter after its launch on the space shuttle Atlantis in 1995.

Off the right wing — if the trainer had wings, it doesn't — is suspended a half-scale but highly detailed model of the Hubble Space Telescope (complete with a spacewalking astronaut, also half-size).

At the front of the payload bay, guests can peer through the external airlock into the crew compartment's middeck, its storage lockers clearly in sight. An even better view of the interior awaits those who can venture inside — either in person or virtually.

"We'll have limited crew compartment tours offered by tour guide, which are going to be run through our educational department," Nunn said. "But for visitors who aren't able to get into the actual crew compartment, we have a set of wonderful VR tours."

Through the hatch

Climbing into a space shuttle, even a mockup trainer, is not easy — especially if you have never done it before. It's much like trying to push a square (or at least long and lanky) peg through a round hole.

And that's just the first of the challenges of trying to tour museum guests — of multiple sizes — through the crew cabin of the Full Fuselage Trainer.

"We're going with NASA's height limit, so 6 foot, 4," Nunn said. "Children have to be ten years or older and always accompanied by an adult. There is going to be a dress code and obviously physical mobility requirements."

Once through the hatch, the space available is limited. Divided between upper and lower, or flight and mid-decks, the pressurized crew compartment was designed to take full advantage of the microgravity environment. Crammed into an area no bigger than the interior of a minivan are a wall of storage lockers, a food galley, bathroom, a ****pit, control panels and a sleeping area.

"The most recurring comment we get is, 'I didn't realize it was so small in there' when they go into the crew cabin," Hagedorn said. "That is almost always the first comment."

In Earth orbit, moving between the shuttle's floors required only pushing off of a wall and floating through one of two openings on either side of the cabin. On the ground, that almost effortless action requires a steep, vertical ladder (or in NASA speak, the "inter-deck access aid").

And what goes up, has to come down.

That means that guests won't just need to be "this tall" to ride this ride, but also be able to maneuver inside without hinderance of physical or mental disability. In trial runs with off-the-street visitors chosen by a lottery, adults and kids alike either recognized their own limits while climbing up or had regrets once they were already standing on the flight deck and were faced with descending down a ladder they couldn't see.

"The first thing we learned is that we have to make sure people can negotiate the interior. If they have any kind of infirmities or disabilities of any kind, it's very problematic," said Hagedorn.

Visitors' hesitations aren't the only concern, though. There is also the problem of those who feel too comfortable and view every switch, button and knob — of which there are many on both decks — as an invitation to flick, push and twist.

"We re-learned that people can't keep their hands off the thing," Hagedorn said. "It's pretty busy in there."

Plexiglass covers have been added to keep off wandering hands but responsibility will fall to the tour guides, who will need to remind guests that the FFT is not just a hands-on exhibit, but an artifact as well.

"We'll be walking that fine line between the museum's dual missions of preservation and education," Nunn said.

That dichotomy is illustrated by the one required change the museum had to make to the trainer: adding a sprinkler head to both decks in case of a fire.

"The only thing we had to modify, and even then we used existing holes, the fire marshal did require us to put in a sprinkler head into the crew compartment," Hagedorn said. "We did that, but it's unobtrusive and the only concession we made to the absolute accuracy of the artifact."

The museum hasn't yet worked out the final details of how access to the crew cabin will be offered, though it almost certainly will be through a premium tour of some sort. The museum's education department is looking at including the experience as part of a larger program they will offer about the shuttle program and training for space exploration.

Case study

The FFT is the centerpiece and largest display inside the Space Gallery, but it is intended as only the anchor for an expanding exhibit.

"This is just the first phase of our grand vision," Nunn told collectSPACE.com. "The real cohesive storyline is only just now starting to flesh out. We have known what we want the final exhibit to be and that is for an exhibit called 'Spaceflight Academy.'"

"Basically, what it'll focus on is, from the shuttle era going forward — using the shuttle program and the FFT as a case study — what does it take to get into space? What is it like living and working in space? What did we learn from the shuttle program? And all along the way, how did the astronauts train for these various elements of space flight?" Nunn explained.

"Then, what does that mean for the future of spaceflight?" he added.

Some of that future is already on display.

Looking out the forward windows of the trainer's ****pit, another of the gallery's larger artifacts comes into view: the Charon test vehicle from Blue Origin, a commercial spaceflight company founded by Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos. The Charon is a precursor testbed to Blue Origin's development of a family of reusable launch vehicles.

Displayed behind the shuttle mockup is another manned spacecraft, the real Russian Soyuz TMA-14 capsule, on which the man who lent his name to the gallery flew to space. Charles Simonyi, the Hungarian-American software billionaire, donated the spacecraft, one of the two he rode on during his two self-funded missions to the International Space Station, as well as his pressure suit and $3 million towards the $12 million need to build the gallery.

Other artifacts displayed with the FFT include a prototype for the shuttle's orbital maneuvering engines, astronauts' flight and pressure suits, components from the Mars rover Curiosity, and personal effects from shuttle Columbia and Challenger fallen crew members.

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Originally Posted by Renegade

Let's go to mars.

We're not that far yet! We only have rovers over there.

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Plus, more pictures of Endeavour's exhibit. Which is now open to the public.

Space shuttle Endeavour opened on public display Tuesday (Oct. 30) at the California Science Center in Los Angeles. The debut marked the culmination of the NASA orbiter's journey into retirement and the launch of its new mission to inspire a new generation of scientists, engineers and explorers.

"How about the Endeavour? Isn't she beautiful?" Bill Nye, "The Science Guy" and executive director of The Planetary Society, asked the schoolchildren and invited guests who gathered under the orbiter for the grand opening of the Samuel Oschin Space Shuttle Endeavour Display Pavilion. His question was met with cheers and applause.

"This is just a fantastic day for California, a fantastic day for Los Angeles, and a fantastic day for the United States, as we can share this great use of our intellect and treasure with the world from one of the world's most wonderful cities," added Nye.

According to the California Science Center, as many as 7,000 visitors will tour the space shuttle Endeavour's display daily now that it is open.

In order to protect the shuttle from the risks of a major earthquake, Endeavour is mounted atop four friction-pendulum seismic isolators that will enable it to glide gently back and forth, breaking the connection between Endeavour and the ground.




Space shuttle Endeavour is joined in the Samuel Oschin Display Pavilion by two other large artifacts: a SPACEHAB logistics module, the "float-in closet" that flew on Endeavour to space, and an authentic space shuttle main engine (Endeavour has installed replicas).





The Samuel Oschin Space Shuttle Endeavour Display Pavilion is intended only to be temporary. This model reveals the planned design for the Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center, where Endeavour's permanent exhibit will place it in a launch pad configuration.



Before entering the display pavilion, visitors tour through "Endeavour: The California Story," an exhibit celebrating Endeavour’s many scientific achievements and its strong connection to California, where all the orbiters were built. The "California Story" includes images of Endeavour under construction locally in Palmdale and Downey, as well as artifacts that flew into space aboard Endeavour.



Guests can touch these tires from Endeavour's final flight, STS-134, which show the wear from landing on the runway.



One of the Endeavour's three fuel cells, which generated electricity to power the orbiter's control and life support systems during flight.




The space potty, or Waste Collection System, provided a high-tech solution to one of space travel's most pressing concerns.




The galley, removed from the orbiter's middeck, served as a kitchen in space for astronauts aboard space shuttle Endeavour.



Astronaut Garrett Reisman loaned the California Science Center many of his personal mementos from his 2008 flight on Endeavour to the International Space Station. Included in the display are personal photos, space food samples and Reisman's hygiene kit.


Transferred from its original facility in Canoga Park, Calif., the Rocketdyne Operations Support Center (ROSC) was used to monitor the space shuttle main engines during every launch and ascent to orbit, including Endeavour's 25 missions.

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24 years ago today, the USSR's Space Shuttle Buran launched on it's first and only unmanned spaceflight. The flight lasted 3 hours and did 2 orbits around Earth.




Buran was the only Soviet Space Shuttle completed, since the program was cancelled in 1993.




The Buran was made to directly compete with the American Space Shuttle, which was believed be used to attack Russia from space at the time.



On May 12th, 2002, a hangar in Kazakhstan collapsed due to poor maintenance. This hangar has Buran inside of it, the only Soviet Space Shuttle. Buran was destroyed and 8 workers were killed.





After the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster, several scientists looked into restarting the Buran program back up. More recently, the director of Moscow's Central Machine Building Institute has said the Buran project will be reviewed in the hopes of restarting a similar manned spacecraft design, with rocket test launches as soon as 2015.

[FenwickHockey65]

http://www.cracked.com/article_19142...as-insane.html

Pretty interesting article about the Soviet space program.

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Very interesting article.

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The space shuttle Atlantis has been encased in a protective plastic, a wrap that will keep the spacecraft dust-free while construction crews finish building the exhibit hall to showcase her to the public.

Atlantis arrived at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex on Nov. 2, rolling into the $100 million attraction that will be finished and opened to the world next July.

Since reaching the retirement home, Atlantis was offloaded from the 76-wheel motorized transporter and secured to beams that will be used for lifting the 152,700-pound craft into its display configuration.

Workers this week covered the shuttle with the same type of wrapping you might see around boats being shipped down the highway. It will keep the dust and debris from coming in contact with the priceless artifact in the construction zone.

The final wall of the building, left unassembled in order to get the massive orbiter inside, will be finished in the coming weeks. The facility should have the air conditioning system established in early December.

In the next few days, the crane and rigging company hired by KSCVC will finish the delicate job of raising Atlantis 36 feet off the ground and tilting the orbiter 43.21 degrees to the port side, the final display orientation to mimic the shuttle still flying in space.

Next spring, the plastic will be removed in preparation for opening Atlantis' payload bay doors.

This pit will anchor one of the solid rocket boosters in the outside exhibit of a full scale external tank and attached SRBs that guests will walk under to enter the Atlantis hall.

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"Fast Facts" from Endeavour's exhibit at the California Science Center.









Fact #2 in this picture is incorrect:

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Today in space history: 1960: Mercury-Redstone 1 launches for five inches, settles back down on its pedestal, and then fires its escape tower.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7O4V7JfeTSU

[FenwickHockey65]

I'm assuming that wasn't supposed to happen.

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Originally Posted by FenwickHockey65

I'm assuming that wasn't supposed to happen.

Pretty much.

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Astronauts celebrate Thanksgiving too!

http://collectspace.com/news/news-112212a.html

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The requirements for displaying a Space Shuttle: http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/297529main_SSP_RFI.pdf