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Cookies received with banner ads are collected by our ad company, and we do not have access to this information. External Links: AstroMadness. Kelly: I've seen it. It's very impressive. Stuhlinger: So the Redstone is here. The Jupiter is here.
You should see the museum. It's worth seeing. We natives are quite proud of the museum, and we say it's the finest and largest rocket museum not only in the country, but in the solar system, which is easy to claim.
Did you anticipate when you were developing the Redstone rocket that it would be used for purposes of man's, or human, space flight? Stuhlinger: The Redstone? Stuhlinger: Well, again it is in here. The answer is yes, and it's one of the anecdotes. The Redstone flew in '53 the first time, and even before that, in about '52, von Braun and I met each other in the hallway one day, and just in passing, he said to me, "With the Redstone we can do it.
I said, "Do what? He said it would not be a very elegant way to put a ten-pound or fifteen-pound satellite into orbit with such a monster like the Redstone, but it's our only way how we can do it soon. There is no other way. And he added, as far-sighted as he was, he said, "If you don't do it somehow like this. Then the Russians will do it before we do it. That's again in here. I wouldn't like to go into it.
It takes too long. It's also in the other article I gave you about Sputnik. It's also described briefly in there and at length in here. Stuhlinger: Well, anyway, the Explorer was launched in ' It was a very dramatic story, the whole thing, very, very suspenseful and full of hopes and frustrations, all of that, and it would be not right if I began to tell about it now.
It would take until midnight also. You can read much of it in here. That was the Explorer, and then the Jupiter also sent — that's heavier and stronger — sent up satellites and then, of course, other people sent up satellites and it became not only a nationwide, but a worldwide undertaking now. And if you just imagine that we have right now at any time, I think about 2, — I'm not quite sure — satellites in orbit, different ones.
Kelly: It seems incredible. It's incredible. Kelly: And it makes you realize how big the Earth is, too. Oh, yes. Kelly: To understand that none of them are running into each other or geosynchronous —. Stuhlinger: You wanted to know about Skylab and the space station? Kelly: Yes, and perhaps shuttle. You worked on the Saturn as well. Stuhlinger: Shuttle and Saturn. Kelly: There are so many things that you've done. Stuhlinger: Many of your questions are what is my work in there.
Stuhlinger: I should make a few general remarks here first. Kelly: Okay. Stuhlinger: My personal work in Peenemunde at first was a guidance system. You know, probably, roughly at least, what a guidance system is and what it must do. Stuhlinger: My particular work was in accelerometers and integrators. An accelerometer measures the acceleration.
It integrates the acceleration once to get the velocity and twice to get the distance. Can you follow that? Kelly: Yes, I can. Stuhlinger: And if you do that on a flying rocket, that instrument can tell you at any moment not only how the acceleration is, but how the velocity is and what distance it has traveled.
That is a so-called inertial system. Inertial means that it is done on board, without connection to the ground, which is very important because it cannot be disturbed by radio means.
That was my work in Peenemunde and in Fort Bliss to some extent also. Now, in Huntsville, I began to change over to some extent in the following way. I have to begin at a more general viewpoint. The space flight is done primarily to explore the space, to explore the world around our Earth, which means that we engineers who build the rocket have to have a strong connection with the scientists who know how to explore, what to look after, and what to do with the results which we gain from there.
This duality is a very important point if one wants to understand the whole space program: the engineers on one side and the scientists on the other side, the engineers who build the machines and the scientists who use them.
The end result would be better knowledge of our Earth, which is very important, of course, to have and to use, to increase also. My function, particularly beginning here in Huntsville, was about the following. Basically I wanted to establish contact between us engineers and the scientists on the outside. In doing that, my work would be something like that of a two-way ambassador. That means he goes out from the engineers and tells the scientists what the engineers can do, and then he comes back and tells the engineers what the scientists want.
You see? And that is very important in order to establish and maintain that very necessary interaction between the scientists and the engineering, which is very important. I would say it's almost a vital necessity to do that. If there's no reason and no purpose for the rockets to use, then why should they be built? And if the scientists don't have a vehicle to go out in space, they can estimate and speculate forever without knowing how it really looks like out there.
So that was my function. Now, there are some people that describe that position a little bit more differently and more realistically, unfortunately sometimes. They say, well, when a person like that goes to the scientists, they say, "Oh, well, he's an engineer. He knows nothing. They are dumb however you look at them.
There's a lot of diplomacy one has to utilize here, and knowledge, too, of course. One should know what one talks about, can talk both languages, more or less. Kelly: It seems you were uniquely suited for that with you background in both engineering and — Stuhlinger: Well, it helped, of course. It helped. I tried just to do that. That was my main effort. In addition to that, I did a few more realistic things. I developed the idea of electric propulsion, made a number of publications and talks all over.
And another one was to prepare Skylab, and that was a very good example of what I just said of this double, or two-way, ambassador. There were some people who said we should do something with our rockets to build up some interest in the outside world, of the scientists in what we are doing.
And there were some scientists who said, "Well, we would love to use your rockets if we knew how to do it. I worked on their committees and met them and visited them and telephoned and so on. Here in this book there is a list of all the scientists, about fifty-six, for the Skylab, and I had established contact with all of them and told them what they can expect and how they should prepare their instruments coming back, and I told my colleagues here how to build the facilities, the stabilized platform and all kinds of things so that the scientists can use it.
This is a function which is overlooked by many people who don't really see and don't believe that it is necessary, but it is necessary. It's a very important function one has to do. Well, anyway, that was my main function. One exception was, for example, the Skylab.
It began actually — I would say this, Professor Oberth died in ' In his book he said one of the things we can do from orbit, from a satellite, is have telescopes there and look at the universe with an optical capability which would be unobtainable from Earth. Are you versed in astronomy and optics to some extent?
There are three or four main factors which are very different between observing from Earth and observing in orbit. For example, we had no atmosphere to disturb the vision. The atmosphere around us does not allow us to have a resolution of images of better than about half an hour a second. For an amateur photographer it's good, but for an astronomer it's not enough. They want more. Second, ultraviolet rays do not come through here, so we cannot observe on the Earth the UV, the ultraviolet, of emissions of stars.
Another one is that the atmosphere introduces a jitter because of variations in density of the path of the light through the atmosphere. Therefore, one cannot expect pictures or images better than a certain capability, resolution, and wavelength limitation also. Anyway, Oberth pointed that out in So, around '55 or so, some astronomer said, "Well, couldn't we do something to put a telescope on one of your machines and go up in orbit?
Some optimists said, "Let us launch one of your Saturn capsules, command service module, and put a telescope on it. Kelly: So that was the early design of the satellite. Stuhlinger: It was the early design.
Now, that was the beginning. When I started my work here in Huntsville, I had talked to von Braun and to others, too, and said, "This is something that we should do more of it and it looks beautiful and very promising, and we can really do something for science.
When the scientists are happy with us, that gives us a lot of firm ground to extend on with our rocket work. Fortunately, there were other people. Also he said, "Well, that's fine, but we should do more. That's too modest. We want to do this also and this also and this also. They had interest in the most different subjects — astronomy, but also actions of weightlessness and materials, processes, things of that kind, observing of the atmosphere.
Kelly: Some microgravity research. Stuhlinger: Microgravity work and effects on astronauts and living beings. Anyway, we soon had a long list of things that should be done, and the system grew lots and lots and lots, and that service module was no longer sufficient.
And then here came then an idea to me that von Braun had from the very beginning. Well, I should say the very beginning, that means from about on. He said, "We should, of course, build a livable station in orbit as soon as we can. However," he said, "the best way to do it without making it too expensive and too difficult and involved, let us take an empty tank of one of the rockets which we launch up there and let us make a habitat out of the tank, the empty tank.
So he said, "Let's do that. You're running out of time otherwise. The first idea that von Braun had, and he had to make it very cheap so that it wouldn't cost too much, he said, "Let us launch a two-stage Saturn," the big one, not the Saturn V, but the Saturn 1. The second stage had a hydrogen tank, an oxygen tank, and it was sitting on the first stage. It was used, needed, to burn the second engine for the second stage so they can reach orbit.
Then the idea was that when the tank is empty after having reached orbit, one could go up there with another flight, astronauts in their garbs, in their suits, could go in and just clean it out and put things on the walls and all of that. It was the idea of the so-called "wet workshop. That was the wet workshop, and it had the advantage that one would not have to launch an extra container.
You know, the container would be there with the tank. But one would only have to go up with the service module later on and take new parts and put them in those instruments. This was, for those who would have to build it, a nightmare. The extravehicular activities are possible, but a person in the suit and with an oxygen bottle on his back is not too agile in building up the instrument and all that.
So the idea of the wet workshop was a kind of a sales — I wouldn't say a sales gimmick, but it was to make it easier to sell the idea. On the other hand, von Braun and his co-workers who worked on that system, they had always in the back of their mind, "Well, when we are close to it, we will change it into a dry workshop.
It would be, again, a rocket, by this time now a Saturn V rocket, the big one, the real big one, and it had the two stages, one, II stage which will burn, and then it would have a third stage, and the third stage would be the tank of the second stage again, but without fuel. It would not be used as fuel. It would be equipped completely on the ground. It would be a complete workshop from the ground on. One could install it and build it up on the ground under comfortable conditions.
It would be launched by the Saturn V, so we had enough thrust to put it up there, and then we would have it right there from the beginning to be occupied and to work in it. That was the so-called "dry workshop. They don't look at the possibility to build or not to build it, and they don't know the problems the engineers would have had. However, something important happened.
In the meantime, our lunar project proceeded, and we made good progress. It worked. You know, we had the men on the moon and coming back, and the Congress was jubilant about the new image that the American people and country and government had for the outside world.
Our boss in Washington at that time, that was George [E. You remember his name, I'm sure. Stuhlinger: Maybe you know him personally, George Mueller. He used that moment when the Congress was so happy and so up in the seventh cloud, almost, and he said, "Gentlemen, we have come to the conclusion that we should build a dry workshop. Kelly: It sure was. Stuhlinger: We had a mishap on the launching, as you probably know. There was this —. Kelly: Right. Stuhlinger: And for us inside, that was a very tragic situation because it could have been prevented so easily and a few things were just not done right by some people, but it's of no use to say afterwards when something like that happened, "It's your fault," and so on.
So how was the problem fixed? Did you work with other centers in fixing—? It was the meteorite shield, I believe, that didn't deploy correctly? It was the following. Here is the tank itself, the Skylab inside, and then there was a meteorite shield out here. On the outside, around the —.
At that time, before we had done that, von Braun told me one day we should know more about the meteorites in orbit. How dangerous are they for our space station? Do we have to expect hits and damage? How many are there, and how big are they? And he asked me to look into that with my little group of co-workers. We did, and we found out that one just doesn't know. There had been a few experiments, but they were contradicting, and we found out why they were contradicting and they were no good, so we decided we would just have to make a new measurement, and we made the new measurement by building a system which is called Pegasus.
We have a Pegasus 2 now that's something different, but that Pegasus was a winged system with huge wings, space capsule, and these wings were only sensors for meteorites. The sensor was the following. It was a thin layer of metal, then an insulating layer, and another layer of metal. When a meteorite hit here, it made a little hole here, and that hit was such a hit, produced a lot of temperature.
You know, it's a very fast particle that hit, so there's a little, like an explosion for a moment, and that explosion goes through here, and that explosion makes a conducting path because of the hot ionized gases which are — for a very short moment. Now, if you have a condenser here connected to this one here, and this is charged up by a power supply here, kept on charge, but you have a condenser, and there is this short here, then the condenser discharges through for a very short moment, half a microsecond or so.
When you have an instrument in here, you can measure the time and the amount of current, of discharge, that flows over here, and then after a very short time, it is over and there is a hole but there's no further discharge. So the instrument is at rest again. So when you look at the record of the instrument, it looks like this, and all of a sudden this here, and that means a meteorite has hit.
When there is a big one, then there's a big discharge, and that looks like this. When there's a small one, it looks like this here. So from the size we can estimate how big or how fast, or both, the meteorite was. And we built that thing.
It was a huge system. You can see pictures of it in some places. I think it's in here, "like a two-story building," it says. We flew it on the Saturn, and it worked beautifully. That was many years ago. I even don't remember when — in the fifties.
So, forty years ago. Even today it's still the best measurement of meteorites in orbit that we have. It has not been improved, the data which we got.
And we found out that there are not many meteorites. The problem that our Skylab would be hit by a meteorite was minimal, a certain percent, maybe one dangerous hit in a thousand years or something like that. I then said to von Braun, "Let's forget about this meteorite shield. It is a strange contraption here anyway, and we don't need it, and we have proven that we don't need it, so forget it. Kelly: Although it was fixed. Stuhlinger: It was fixed. Kelly: Can you tell me a little bit about that?
Stuhlinger: It was a dramatic kind of fix. The people who did it have to be admired, certainly. There was a little hole here in the white for observations, with an airlock to it.
So they here in Huntsville built a kind of umbrella, and that umbrella reached through here and then unfolded here so that it would spread out and would protect that Skylab against heat. That was the problem, the main problem, the heat, because that meteorite shield was also a heat shield at the same time. So the umbrella was a shade for the Skylab, and that brought the temperature down again.
Tape recorder turned off. It's a question of how do we go to the moon, with Earth orbit rendezvous or lunar rendezvous or direct? And that is a story which is very clear and well known to us old-timers, but not to the new-timers, and the new-timers often say, "Well, that's where von Braun was wrong, but he was told the right way by the people in Houston, and then he had to agree.
Kelly: Can we get that on tape? Whenever you're ready. You know, probably, the story of the different ways of how to go to the moon.
Stuhlinger: The one is to go up there into orbit and then have a rendezvous here and go on from here and go to the moon and go down directly and then come back like so.
Kelly: And that's the Earth-orbit rendezvous. Stuhlinger: That's the Earth-orbit rendezvous. And then there's this other one, which is go from here into orbit but then a little later go out to the moon, go down and up again, and then, from here, back to Earth. That's the lunar-orbit rendezvous. And then the third one is a direct mode, what goes from here — here's the moon — direct down and up again and so on. Kelly: And that's the direct ascent. Now, von Braun was at first for this Earth-orbit rendezvous, and he said we will have to have two launchings of two Saturn Vs — this one, and that's the second one, Saturn V — and then we can do it this way.
Von Braun had three reasons for doing that. First, he said, if we do it that way, we will develop the orbital rendezvous method for this project, and that will be a milestone for the space flight to come, for many, many other applications. If Russian space travelers should ever be in a similar emergency situation, Americans would do the same without any doubt.
Higher food production through survey and assessment from orbit, and better food distribution through improved international relations, are only two examples of how profoundly the space program will impact life on Earth. I would like to quote two other examples: stimulation of technological development, and generation of scientific knowledge.
The requirements for high precision and for extreme reliability which must be imposed upon the components of a moon-travelling spacecraft are entirely unprecedented in the history of engineering.
The development of systems which meet these severe requirements has provided us a unique opportunity to find new material and methods, to invent better technical systems, to manufacturing procedures, to lengthen the lifetimes of instruments, and even to discover new laws of nature.
All this newly acquired technical knowledge is also available for application to Earth-bound technologies. Every year, about a thousand technical innovations generated in the space program find their ways into our Earthly technology where they lead to better kitchen appliances and farm equipment, better sewing machines and radios, better ships and airplanes, better weather forecasting and storm warning, better communications, better medical instruments, better utensils and tools for everyday life.
Presumably, you will ask now why we must develop first a life support system for our moon-travelling astronauts, before we can build a remote-reading sensor system for heart patients. The answer is simple: significant progress in the solutions of technical problems is frequently made not by a direct approach, but by first setting a goal of high challenge which offers a strong motivation for innovative work, which fires the imagination and spurs men to expend their best efforts, and which acts as a catalyst by including chains of other reactions.
Spaceflight without any doubt is playing exactly this role. The voyage to Mars will certainly not be a direct source of food for the hungry. However, it will lead to so many new technologies and capabilities that the spin-offs from this project alone will be worth many times the cost of its implementation. Besides the need for new technologies, there is a continuing great need for new basic knowledge in the sciences if we wish to improve the conditions of human life on Earth.
We need more young men and women who choose science as a career and we need better support for those scientists who have the talent and the determination to engage in fruitful research work.
Challenging research objectives must be available, and sufficient support for research projects must be provided. Again, the space program with its wonderful opportunities to engage in truly magnificent research studies of moons and planets, of physics and astronomy, of biology and medicine is an almost ideal catalyst which induces the reaction between the motivation for scientific work, opportunities to observe exciting phenomena of nature, and material support needed to carry out the research effort.
Among all the activities which are directed, controlled, and funded by the American government, the space program is certainly the most visible and probably the most debated activity, although it consumes only 1.
As a stimulant and catalyst for the development of new technologies, and for research in the basic sciences, it is unparalleled by any other activity. In this respect, we may even say that the space program is taking over a function which for three or four thousand years has been the sad prerogative of wars. How much human suffering can be avoided if nations, instead of competing with their bomb-dropping fleets of airplanes and rockets, compete with their moon-travelling space ships!
This competition is full of promise for brilliant victories, but it leaves no room for the bitter fate of the vanquished, which breeds nothing but revenge and new wars.
Although our space program seems to lead us away from our Earth and out toward the moon, the sun, the planets, and the stars, I believe that none of these celestial objects will find as much attention and study by space scientists as our Earth.
The bounty of hydrocarbon fuels -coal, oil, and gas, which biology and geology conspired to trap underground millions of years ago- is limited, and it is not being replaced.
Many analysts believe that, despite the current frenzied search for new deposits, the dwindling of our proved reserves of oil and gas can only be slowed, not halted. Facing up to the problem, getting down to solutions. February Physicist David Criswell, from the University of Houston, says "We are already well beyond what the biosphere can provide. We have to go outside to get something else". One is naturally inclined to think of a planetary surface as the first candidate for a place to establish a permanent space settlement.
After all, the planets are there, ready to be colonized. Most of the planets offer conditions that are far from ideal in establishing a space colony.
So then, why not in real space, that is, in orbit? Although an analysis of the relative merits of both options doesn't yield a clear winner, if we remember that the main justification for colonizing space was the quest for cheap unlimited sources of energy the fact that an orbital colony situated in permanent sunshine guarantees a constant flow of solar energy calls clearly for this last option.
A purely rational scientific approach to the problem shows that the fate of the human race is bound to the Sun's energy. And even if we want to outlive our friendly star, the only way to do so is still by engineering a space colony. Comments and suggestions : [email protected]. If conditions are not acceptable, planetary engineers can study how plants and other living organisms could be used to change the climate and thus create a suitable atmosphere and climate to sustain life.
Days and nights. By being on a planetary surface, the length of day and night will be fixed according to its own self rotation, and this may limit the amount of time of sunlight exposure the main source of energy for which the settlement is intended. Individually bigger: Any celestial body within the solar system in which the settlement could be placed would definitely be bigger than any settlement in orbit. Hostile climate: Although the vacuum of space is hardly appealing, it may be easier to control than some of the extreme weather conditions of some of the planets.
Gravity : Although planets have varying levels of gravity and the effects on the human body of gravity other than 1 g are unknown, it will still be better than living in microgravity.
Base concept confined: Even though available planetary surface could be very vast, the colony itself will have to be shielded against radiation and provide a breathable atmosphere and survivable climate.
This can only be engineered in reduced volumes until terraforming processes become effective. The colony itself would thus be quite confined. Availability of Materials. By being on planetary surface, there is no need to transport materials for construction since they are there. Most solid planets, although they don't harbor life, offer suitable material for construction and radiation shielding.
Availability of materials.
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