tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-69529250689254948922024-03-05T20:27:10.067-08:00Citizen O'KaneAmerica's #1 Mail-Order Rocket Scientist.Jim O'Kanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01806624628546492210noreply@blogger.comBlogger69125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6952925068925494892.post-73422843006960713372023-06-14T20:36:00.004-07:002023-06-14T20:40:53.386-07:00<h2 style="text-align: left;">A Micro-Genre: The "As Himself" Film</h2><p style="text-align: left;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRr_D_e_qOtAPlUYfNOVjl0exoQJzuj8ZujORKWi3K1RnpCeX2p_JOeg4QLG-SBcSHS3Nd1m3NzBu9NatnKcRfcpNabum8Woq_ppbqCSIubNNtakbD6Co0bzneCtELTLn_WlS_Xm5drAh5TH2rOaDZX7BynKEbdXPxA2TSvWUupMnO1wE4HMFE7P5S/s640/fieldssucker.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRr_D_e_qOtAPlUYfNOVjl0exoQJzuj8ZujORKWi3K1RnpCeX2p_JOeg4QLG-SBcSHS3Nd1m3NzBu9NatnKcRfcpNabum8Woq_ppbqCSIubNNtakbD6Co0bzneCtELTLn_WlS_Xm5drAh5TH2rOaDZX7BynKEbdXPxA2TSvWUupMnO1wE4HMFE7P5S/s320/fieldssucker.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /> <p></p><p style="text-align: left;">Oh, would some Power give us the gift</p><p style="text-align: left;">To see ourselves as others see us!</p><p>It would from many a blunder free us,</p><p>And foolish notion:</p><p>What airs in dress and gait would leave us,</p><p>And even devotion!</p><p><br /></p><p>"<i>To A Louse, On Seeing One on a Lady's Bonnet at Church</i>" </p><p> -- Robert Burns, 1786 </p><p><br /></p><p>Over the past century, we've become used to many tropes of filmmaking. One of the most pervasive, if easily overlooked casting habits, is getting celebrities to portray themselves on screen. </p><p>There are three types of "As Himself" films: having a person recreate an event on film that originally made them famous; surprising the audience with a brief cameo; and creating a caricature of the celebrity's public persona. </p><p>The first type is easy enough to recognize: Babe Ruth saying farewell to Lou Gehrig in <i>Pride of the Yankees; </i>Audie Murphy acting out his WWII exploits in <i>To Hell and Back -- </i>these are obvious roles. There are also odd crossover roles, where a celebrity acts as a narrator to explain a plot point. A great example of this is Margot Robbie in <i>The Big Short</i>, where she gives a quick lesson in subprime mortgages to the audience while taking a bubble bath. </p><p>The second category, the celebrity cameo, is probably the most frequently seen "As Himself" outing in films. The cameo is a pop-up surprise for viewers, not expecting a real person playing themselves in a film (typically a comedy). The examples are numerous: Merv Griffin in <i>The Man with Two Brains;</i> Donald Trump in <i>Home Alone 2;</i> Marcel Marceau in <i>Silent Movie; </i>Keanu Reeves in <i>Always be My Maybe; </i>Stan Lee in <i>Mallrats; </i>Elton John in <i>The Spice Girls Movie; </i>Tom Jones in <i>Mars Attacks!;</i> Ed Sheeran in <i>Yesterday</i> - - all these films give the audience pause to say, "wait a minute - what are THEY doing in this movie?"</p><p>The third version is the meatiest use of a celebrity appearance in a film: the caricature role. Entire plotlines are structured around a fictional biography of a real person: John Malkovich in <i>Being John Malkovich; </i>Nicolas Cage in <i>The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent; </i>Bruce Campbell in <i>My Name is Bruce!</i>; and Arnold Schwarzenegger in <i>The Last Action Hero.</i></p><p>My favorite caricature movie featuring an actor playing himself is W.C. Fields in Universal Pictures' 1941 feature, <i>Never Give a Sucker an Even Break.</i> Written by Fields himself (using the pen name Otis Criblecoblis), the story imagines a surreal series of events in the actor's efforts to write and star in a motion picture. <br /><br />Fields builds not-too-subtle barbs at Universal Pictures into the screenplay, making fun of a fictional producer, Franklin Pangborn. Pangborn can't stand the script Fields is pitching, which is acted out on-screen as Pangborn complains about the plot holes and ridiculous nature of the story. <br /><br />I really don't want to give away too many scenes in this film, as it's best experienced rather than described. Let's just say there are some silent-era car chases and mayhem typical of Fields' sense of humor. The banter between Fields and the curmudgeonly characters he interacts with throughout the film provides most of the comedy. It's a beautiful, rough-and-tumble slapstick script, and arguably one of Fields' most representative films of his comedic genius. <br /><br />Do you have a favorite "As Himself" film? Let me know in the comments. </p>Jim O'Kanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01806624628546492210noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6952925068925494892.post-39044578773546310402021-08-03T12:11:00.001-07:002021-08-03T12:11:08.730-07:00Restorations vs Extrapolations<p> The Library of Congress version of "Rendezvous in Space" has been digitized, and it's raised almost as many questions as it's answered. </p><p>The print was in great shape, generally. I think that it was a silent version kept it from being screened frequently by LoC employees, so the print is relatively unscathed. There are some color fades and several vertical scrapes that can be repaired, but nothing too severe. <br /><br />Certainly, the biggest problem with the print is that it has quite a few differences from the original film, and it's missing key sections I had hoped to replace in the production print. The discussion between Danny Thomas and Sid Melton, talking about space stewardesses, isn't present in the LoC copy. </p><p>There's even a complete replacement of the title card from one film to the other. <br /><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj82HGtH0UANlH7fHMsymvatpT0RJMJmUtAisvWaZo3HSHzDJwWy6dL8YnIAZF2Yx8MFTwMZIj6VogTeV2uHQjEaCYg_IvGPFWQS17ms01C3aJt2xdmRfHM4YH7M0hffXasGPMO10jC-zM/s1813/multititle.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1314" data-original-width="1813" height="232" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj82HGtH0UANlH7fHMsymvatpT0RJMJmUtAisvWaZo3HSHzDJwWy6dL8YnIAZF2Yx8MFTwMZIj6VogTeV2uHQjEaCYg_IvGPFWQS17ms01C3aJt2xdmRfHM4YH7M0hffXasGPMO10jC-zM/s320/multititle.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div><br /></div>Based on the fragmentary scenes in the LoC copy, I think this print was deposited to fulfill minimum copyright requirements, instead of being a posterity record. <br /><br />Unless I can find another print, I'm going to have to source from the three existing versions: the David Hammar 1998 VHS copy, the 35mm production print, and the Library of Congress fragments. I think the renovation schedule has just pushed off to the right - - the <i>extreme</i> right. <div><br /></div><div>I'm also going to have to make decisions about what constitutes a "restoration." I think my baseline is going to be the audio track from the VHS, and then choosing the best frames (even if that means the VHS video) for each element of the movie. </div><div><br /></div><div>One sad note is that I have scenes in the LoC copy that have no audio, and no place in the original film. I'm going to trust that they never appeared in the show reel, and omit them from the film. Maybe I'll air them during the credits? More things to ponder as this project progresses. <br /><p><br /></p></div>Jim O'Kanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01806624628546492210noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6952925068925494892.post-86236920234605985522021-06-10T14:34:00.003-07:002021-06-10T14:35:32.420-07:00Reach for the Stars<p> A decade ago, I tracked down many scattered threads of ephemera about the final film of Frank Capra, “Rendezvous in Space,” an industrial short commissioned by Martin‐Marietta Corporation in support of their Titan III missile and X‐24 lifting body sales. Shown at the New York World’s Fair of 1964‐1965 to an estimated audience of seven million visitors, there are only two known remaining prints of the film. One of the prints is at the Library of Congress. The other print, the one shown at the World's Fair and at the NY Hall of Science until 1971 is in my possession, courtesy of the kindness of my late friend David Hammar. </p><p>For years, I worked on understanding whose copyright applied to this film: it was made by Frank Capra, but he was under contract to Martin-Marietta. Martin-Marietta donated the film to the NY Hall of Science, but didn't transfer the copyright to that organization. The NY Hall of Science disposed of the print in a dumpster in 1972, but it was rescued by a trash picker and went through several changes of hands until it wound up with David. </p><p>On YouTube, there's a rough VHS copy of this print, made in extremely low resolution. It's difficult to make out what images are on screen at any given moment. As it stands, nobody's seen a clear version of this film in about a half-century. </p><p>After getting clearance from Lockheed-Martin, I've begun work on restoring as much of this film as I can. The script is cheesy in a Capra-corn sense of the term, but the visuals are striking. Among the artists hired for the animated parts of the film is the cartooning pioneer T. Hee, who was responsible for the Dance of the Hours segment in Disney's <i>Fantasia</i>. There are Titan III missiles taking off, Chinese magicians discovering rocketry, astronauts microwaving steaks in zero gravity, and space stations floating in Earth orbit. <br /><br />My goal is to take the best frames from both of the remaining prints, marry them to a synchronized soundtrack, and rebuild the film as it was originally seen. It's going to be a long process - - I'm estimating 18 months for the project - - but I think this film deserves a proper restoration. </p><p><br /></p><p>More to come as the rebuild progresses. Watch this space for updates!</p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhguliE0jr_EQTfXG-DQPRkmrJLP_mSCn_52o_llJSWB03wh9cPDxsbYe6ecYKeE6QQSpubz8vuWJ8S2YXBWXPHm_3NiWLnpCg8BqFEe9iFQwxW66iJ_aUcUnn6xUYQPj0DIRXG2ER6W8E/s2783/ris_title.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1130" data-original-width="2783" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhguliE0jr_EQTfXG-DQPRkmrJLP_mSCn_52o_llJSWB03wh9cPDxsbYe6ecYKeE6QQSpubz8vuWJ8S2YXBWXPHm_3NiWLnpCg8BqFEe9iFQwxW66iJ_aUcUnn6xUYQPj0DIRXG2ER6W8E/s320/ris_title.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnAn2k6MjR6qy9fuSSeQyUeVWKB6PTqFnIrmP_CzHiAFYpE7JLm2uGl3BtmKyVqDOxrwKWunYh5wVyuNqk1c6YBtH4sbWB6NPMLw4MyLf6Pcg8zI9Ds8IvW_6u6Zm32ELuNJAUsQgAtwQ/s2784/knowhow3.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1130" data-original-width="2784" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnAn2k6MjR6qy9fuSSeQyUeVWKB6PTqFnIrmP_CzHiAFYpE7JLm2uGl3BtmKyVqDOxrwKWunYh5wVyuNqk1c6YBtH4sbWB6NPMLw4MyLf6Pcg8zI9Ds8IvW_6u6Zm32ELuNJAUsQgAtwQ/s320/knowhow3.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgXcOmQV0PIjjnehyphenhyphen_3p_5JVq1TrLroxDQgH3Sib2wj_4ouG2fbCSJE0d4ZfkZXGJfZx5liUDSlM5WG2zJNPPu-XoSV0Uzb6C3MZn926Eo6BbX_nbwScXeCdNG2ECH9QfTqqHv6GLKS8E/s2793/ris002.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1126" data-original-width="2793" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgXcOmQV0PIjjnehyphenhyphen_3p_5JVq1TrLroxDQgH3Sib2wj_4ouG2fbCSJE0d4ZfkZXGJfZx5liUDSlM5WG2zJNPPu-XoSV0Uzb6C3MZn926Eo6BbX_nbwScXeCdNG2ECH9QfTqqHv6GLKS8E/s320/ris002.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><br /><p><br /></p>Jim O'Kanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01806624628546492210noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6952925068925494892.post-80763161159100271262016-11-15T18:50:00.004-08:002016-11-15T18:53:12.077-08:002016: A View from the PastI was listening to a lecture on YouTube by a fellow named Tony Seba, who talks about major disruptions in society, and what happens to the market of what the disruptions displace. <br />
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He showed a picture of Easter Sunday, 1900 on Fifth Avenue in New York City. There are dozens, even hundreds of horse-drawn carriages parading up and down the street -- and in the middle of all these equine-powered vehicles, there's a solitary gasoline fueled automobile.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">NYC-Easter Sunday 1900</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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Fast-forward a dozen or so years. Same street, another Easter Sunday, but now it's 1913. Dozens, perhaps hundreds of gasoline-powered automobiles fill the street. There is exactly one horse in this photo.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">NYC - Easter Sunday 1913</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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It's likely that none of the people in the 1900 picture would guess what the ratio of horses to cars would be in the following decade, but I think it would be safe to assume they'd never think horses would become rarities.<br />
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Yes, there are still horses more than a century later in Manhattan, but they're remanded to pulling a few tourist carts through Central Park. They're novelties, not relied-upon forms of transportation.<br />
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Here in the 21st Century, we're at another disruption point: the end of the internal combustion engine. From the vantage point of when the essay you're reading was written (late fall of 2016), mostly it seems impossible. Right now there are 253 million cars on the road in the United States. Less than a half million are electric vehicles, and most of them cost in excess of $60,000. <br />
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All that's about to change in 2017 with the arrival of two major fleets: the Chevy Bolt, and the Tesla Model 3. Within the first year of production, nearly one million new electric vehicles are expected to wind up in the garages of the non-rich and non-famous. This surge of new cars not powered by gasoline is the first wave of what will be a fundamental overthrow of the reign of internal combustion. <br />
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If you've not experienced driving an electric vehicle, this disruption may seem impossible. There's an entire culture of internal combustion, firmly established in gas stations, Jiffy Lubes, service centers, and transmission shops. All these businesses will soon be as outmoded as typewriter repair stores and Blockbuster video rental centers. The change will be so elemental that it's difficult to picture what the new landscape of transportation will look like. <br />
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Imagine never needing to visit a gas station again. The "gas station" is now your own home, where you'll plug your car in at night pretty much the same way you plug in your smartphone to its charger. There will be no more oil changes, spark plug tune-ups, broken alternators, radiator flushes, muffler shops, replacement fuel pumps, blown head gaskets, or worries about what kind of octane gas to use. You won't have to pay for emissions testing because your car won't emit anything. Every morning, your car will have a "full tank" thanks to an overnight charge. <br />
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Moore's Law, the computer marketing concept that the density of memory storage increases while the price of memory decreases will have a codicil in battery power. We are currently capable of a 100 kWh battery, but that density will increase to 130 kWh within a year's time. As battery density increases, batteries to cover the same distance will decrease in size, allowing for weight savings in a car and further increasing range. The idea of having a 400-mile single charge car battery by 2020 isn't a fantasy - - it's a conservative estimate of the future. <br />
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This may sound unlikely, but I believe electric vehicles will comprise more than 90% of the country's active vehicle fleet by 2023. As adoption of electric cars becomes a standard, the pace of replacement will become as rapid as the replacement of CRTs with flat screen TVs was just a decade ago. Over 98% of electric production is produced from domestic sources, and the demand for gasoline will fade as suddenly as the demand for cassette tapes did 20 years ago. We will look back on 2016 as the end of a strange era, when people carted tanks of flammable fluid around in their vehicles just to propel themselves on the highways. Babies born this year will look at pictures from 2016 and think how strange the whole concept of running gas engines on wheels directly in front of the passenger compartment was. Since I've test driven an electric car, I can grasp that idea clearly - - it's like seeing pictures of steam engines chuffing into train stations half a century ago. <br />
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My advice? Don't buy a new car with an internal combustion engine. You'll regret it within the next 1000 days. I'm serious. Gasoline engines are going the way of DOS, floppy disks, ditto machines, and slide rules. Jim O'Kanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01806624628546492210noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6952925068925494892.post-26276363895970424082016-01-12T20:00:00.002-08:002016-01-12T20:09:38.331-08:00A Cardboard WorldSorry for the pause of more than a dozen months. Overtaken by events, and all that. <br />
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I got back from the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last week. It's an annual ComicCon of whiz-bang equipment being hawked to the credulous masses every January. Thanks to a good friend, I became a temporary "Exhibitor" and wandered the merchandise tables for several days.<br />
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UHDTV seems to have reached the tipping point for home purchases. With 50" screens selling for under $500, I think this is the year they'll start appearing on people's living room walls. In about three years, this little essay will seem quaintly naive, but 4K television is quite an amazing advance for the movie-watching public. Sony has a 4K projector about the size of an old cassette tape that can beam an eight-foot-wide screen onto a wall. I think hardware TVs may be replaced by these little doodads, as it's much easier to ship and hang a fist-sized box on the ceiling than it is to mount a picture window-sized monitor on the wall. <br />
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My favorite two bits of hardware from the show, though, were involved with building Virtual Reality (VR) spaces.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ricoh Theta S</td></tr>
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One item was the Ricoh Theta, a slim plastic stick about as tall as an iPhone with two fisheye lens at opposing sides of the stick. The device records 360° still and video images and broadcasts same to nearby Bluetooth devices. The clarity is astounding. The accompanying software allows for editing and timelapse photography. Its ability to capture an entire sphere of any location in high-definition makes the Theta a game changer for tourist imagery. As it's a mere $346 list price, I think it's going to be a big seller in the coming year. <br />
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Way down the price pyramid, but just as much the game changer is the Google Cardboard viewer. Vendors were handing out version of the viewer for free as tschotskes, and the supported base of media available for the device is expanding exponentially by the day. <br />
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Briefly, Google Cardboard is a View-Master like device to see 3D images through a stereoscopic pair of lenses. The reason it's called "Cardboard" is that the viewer is typically a carefully folded cardboard box, with appropriate slots and pieces of Velcro used to hold the thing together. By dropping an iPhone or Android into one side of the box, the viewer can be used as a simple VR device. Google has quite a few example programs on their site, and many YouTube videos support the Google Cardboard VR standard. <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Google Cardboard</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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The Cardboard viewer is ingenious and amazing - - I put one together in about three minutes, slipped my iPhone into the far end of the box, and had the device calibrated and ready to go in less than another minute. The iPhone's accelerometer passed axis changes on to the software, and the video screen updated my views immediately. <br />
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In one example tour, I walked by the Eiffel Tower and the canals of Venice. I hovered over a baby gorilla in a jungle, and even stood atop the Spirit rover on the surface of Mars. <br />
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The technology isn't quite ready for prime time but it's easy to see how ubiquitous this device and others of its kind will become. I want to learn more about VR technology, so I've ordered a Ricoh Theta to explore the matter in more detail. Expect many experiment posts shortly. <br />
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Links: <br />
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<a href="https://theta360.com/en/" target="_blank">Ricoh Theta S</a><br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.google.com/get/cardboard/" target="_blank">Google Cardboard</a><br />
<br />
<a href="http://gizmodo.com/all-the-coolest-tech-from-ces-2016-1752271024" target="_blank">CES 2016</a><br />
<br />Jim O'Kanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01806624628546492210noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6952925068925494892.post-79410705364063685762014-01-24T21:04:00.000-08:002014-01-24T21:04:41.958-08:00Clip ShowMost people know John Williams as the film composer - - the fellow who wrote the <b>Star Wars</b> theme and the <b>Jurassic Park</b> and the <b>Harry Potter</b> soundtracks. <br />
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<br />
Not too long before he wrote his <b>Jaws</b>
soundtrack, Mr. Williams went by the professional name of "Johnny
Williams," writer of TV themes. He worked on end credits music for shows
like <b>Alcoa Theater</b> and the Bob Hope specials. Much of his work was
incidental music, and went uncredited in quite a few series. <br />
<br />
One of
his most frequent gigs was to write for action/adventure shows produced
by Irwin Allen. Although he didn't write the theme to <b>Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea</b>, he penned many title tracks for Allen, in shows such as <b>The Time Tunnel</b>, <b>Lost in Space</b>, and <b>Land of the Giants</b>.<br />
<br />
Irwin
Allen constantly tinkered with shows to maintain his ratings and dazzle
his audiences (albeit with a limited budget). An unusual technique that
Allen relied on to pep things up was to have Johnny Williams completely
rewrite the theme music after a few seasons. One of the most obvious
examples is <b>Lost in Space</b>, where Williams had originally crafted an
eerie, ominous and echoing theme for the initial two seasons, filled
with trumpets, cellos, and piccolos :<br />
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By the third season Irwin Allen figured he wanted to stress the action and adventure angle and downplay the <i>alien-ness</i>
of outer space. So, he had Johnny dump the old theme and create a more
driven, French horn-stuffed roller coaster of a theme. The new opener
threw audiences into the middle of a fast countdown every week, paced by
ticking rimshots and hyped-up trombone arpeggios. It was definitely a new
look-and-feel for the established series. <br />
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Something I didn't realize until recently was that Allen used a similar approach with his 1968-70 series, <b>Land of the Giants</b>.
In the show's initial outing, Williams built the theme to underline the
ponderous size of the titled Giants on their home world, and the threat
they posed to the puny Earth men who had crashed their ship on the
Giants' planet.</div>
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By the second year of the show, the ratings were dropping, so Allen brought Johnny Williams back to the composing studio to crank out a peppier theme. The new opening would be at a much faster pace, with clashing French horns and bass guitars and syncopated glockenspiels. <br />
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The trick worked, and <b>Giants</b> continued for another two years. It's not easy to say that Johnny's new theme "saved" the show, but it certainly didn't hurt the ratings.<br /><br />Looking back more than four decades at all the work Irwin Allen piled on John(ny) Williams's plate, it's amazing to think about how prolific Williams was beyond his epic movie soundtracks. I can't imagine any current TV theme writers jotting down so many disparate themes and variations for the same shows in the same time frame. Okay, maybe Michael Giacchino - - but is he still doing TV shows after <b>LOST</b>?<br />
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<br />Jim O'Kanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01806624628546492210noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6952925068925494892.post-66622368920984146142014-01-01T15:59:00.000-08:002014-01-01T15:59:35.166-08:00And at Last I See the LightI promised myself that in 2014 I'd write a lot more about less "significant" things and focus more on simple things that flabbergast me. Of course, the flabbergasting began immediately.<br /><br />Disney movies are
eminently rewatchable. The songs, the characters, the settings, and the
plot lines are usually compelling, and the animators typically hide
details that are often overlooked, even after repeated viewings. <br /><br />
I was watching Disney's <i>Tangled -- </i>the Rapunzel story, last week,
and spotted something I've never noticed before this thirty-eighth
playback of the film. In the story, baby Princess Rapunzel is kidnapped
from her castle by an evil sorceress. The sorceress hides Rapunzel in a
tower for eighteen years. Over the ensuing years, Rapunzel's mother and
father (the king and queen) hold a memorial service for Rapunzel by
lighting floating lanterns in honor of their lost daughter. At age 18,
Rapunzel escapes from the sorceress's tower and attends one of these
ceremonies by sitting in a boat, watching the subjects of the kingdom
launch the floating lanterns into the night sky on her birthday. <br />
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<br />The memorial service begins with the King and Queen lifting a single decorated lantern up from the rooftop of their castle.<br />
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The townspeople follow by launching thousands of their own, undecorated lamps. Soon, the sky is full of the bobbing lanterns. <br /></div>
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<br /><br /> Rapunzel sings her song about "seeing the light." While she's singing, her parents' decorated lantern swoops down to the surface of the bay. Rapunzel reaches out and lofts it back up into the sky.<br /></div>
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<br />Only the audience (if they're clever enough to spot it) knows Rapunzel touched the very same lantern her parents lit that night. <br /></div>
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<br />I swear I've watched this movie several dozen times and never noticed that tidbit until last week. Hopefully I'm not the only clueless member of the audience. <br /></div>
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<br /><br /><br /><br /> Jim O'Kanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01806624628546492210noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6952925068925494892.post-25564927390181393242013-12-06T20:10:00.003-08:002013-12-06T21:20:00.141-08:00Joy of Man's Desire<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I write a lot of stuff about the history of flight and the United States
Air Force, but something I never get to write about is the United
States Air Force Band and their vocal accompanists, the Singing
Sargeants.<br />
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Back in the 1970's I used to live near Ridgefield,
Connecticut, which had the nickname of "BandTown, USA" Ridgefield had
an amazing music program in its school system, and produced an
unimaginable number of talented musicians who went on to professional
success. One of their most prolific paths into adult musicianship were
their Junior ROTC programs. So many alumni headed into the US military
bands, the bands themselves came to town and performed on stage at the
high school every year. Even Professor Harold Hill would be impressed. <br />
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Due
to the town's proximity, I had the chance to hear every United States
military band in my high school years. My favorite was, and remains, the
Air Force Band. Although all the bands are the cream of the nation's
band talent, the Air Force Band was the most wide-ranging in its musical
presentations. Everything from John Phillip Sousa to the Bee Gees was
fair game, and the talent displayed in performances was a complete
knockout. Their vocal troupe, the Singing Sargeants (as the name
implies, every member is an OR-5 or greater) could do everything from
Gregorian chants to a capella bebop tunes. I think if they handed out
application forms at the end of performances, they could sign up the
entire audience for basic training the next week.<br />
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Seeing the Air
Force Band in any location is impressive, but seeing them combined with
Air Force history is an inspiring match. What better place could they
sing but in a place such as, oh, the Milestones of Flight Hall in the
National Air & Space Museum in Washington?<br />
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So of course, they did just that.<br />
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<br />
The US Air Force Band is going to be playing at the NASM through much of December. If you're in the DC area, it's an event not to be missed. Check it out - you don't often get to hear an orchestra performing under an X-15.Jim O'Kanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01806624628546492210noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6952925068925494892.post-34667070087313346402013-11-21T21:26:00.002-08:002013-11-21T21:35:46.768-08:00A JFK StoryMy grandfather-in-law, Chris Elson, knew Jack Ruby. Chris was the owner-operator of the Kings Club, the restaurant in Dallas's Adolphus Hotel. As a restauranteur, he knew everyone that served food and hired waitresses in Dallas. Ruby ran the Carousel Club, a burlesque bar across the street from the Adolphus. <br />
<br />
On the 20th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination, I asked Chris what he thought of Jack Ruby, when he knew him back in the day.<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4KTin1JATWq93bZZ8RKoV8HcpZEI9kJHlfSiepwg42OO-5kzf9A-1ScyUMNiQD-FycptBi9veBQABGkza1682lmP8UQtjRGy-Y9qhlzRTm7h7MdPD3shEOZWMnh52voVXadFvRame3OI/s1600/ruby.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4KTin1JATWq93bZZ8RKoV8HcpZEI9kJHlfSiepwg42OO-5kzf9A-1ScyUMNiQD-FycptBi9veBQABGkza1682lmP8UQtjRGy-Y9qhlzRTm7h7MdPD3shEOZWMnh52voVXadFvRame3OI/s320/ruby.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jack Ruby, who shot Oswald, who shot JFK.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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"He was a pimp," said Chris. "He hired a lot of girls who had money problems, drug problems, and pimped them out at his bar." Chris didn't like him at all. <br />
<br />
Chris was interviewed by the Warren Commission about any discussions or sightings of Jack Ruby's roommate, George Senator, after the JFK assassination. Here's the only thing he mentioned to the Commission:<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">CHRIS ELSON, owner and operator of the Kings Club and the Burgurdy Room, Adolphus hotel, advised the Burgundy Room located on the lobby floor and the Kings club located on the sixth floor of the Adolphus Hotel are owned and operated by him. Neither of the clubs opens until noon. ELSON advised that immediately after the assassination of President KENNEDY on November 22, 1963, he contacted the manager of the Adolphus Hotel and found that the Century Room would not open on November 22 and 23, 1963, and he immediately contacted all of his employees who work in the Burgundy Room and Kings Club and advised them that neither would be opened until Monday, November 25, 1963. <br /><br />ELSON advised that on November 28, 1963, GEORGE SENATOR contacted him personally at the Kings Club and stated he had a complaint to make against the piano player in the Burgundy Room. On the evening of November 28, 1963, the piano player allegedly made a remark about JACK RUBY and ELSON contacted all employees and it was determined that none of the employees had seen JACK RUBY, RALPH PAUL, GEORGE SENATOR, or EVA GRANT from November 22 to November 28, 1963.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">The employees of the Burgundy Room advised they were reading the headlines of a newspaper regarding JACK RUBY and this was the basis for the complaint by GEORGE SENATOR.</span><br />
<br />
Senator made a claim that he had met with associates of Jack Ruby at the Kings Club on the 23rd of November, but since Chris explained that the restaurant was closed, this meeting couldn't have happened there. Not a big deal, but it's a discrepancy in testimony that conspiracy theorists try to hang things on. <br />
<br />
<h3>
A Story about November 22nd</h3>
<br />
I asked Chris what he remembered about November 22nd. Did he see the motorcade? "Oh yes," said Chris, "it was right in front of the restaurant." Here's the memory he shared about that day:<br />
<i><br />"I never really liked Kennedy," </i>he said.<i> "Don't know why, I just didn't like him. We figured lunch would be late that day because everyone downtown would want to see the President, so we decided to hold off the restaurant opening until 12:30."<br /><br />"Outside the hotel, we had an awning over the sidewalk that wrapped around the whole building. Some of the girls (waitresses) wanted to get a good look at Jackie, so they went upstairs to walk out on top of the awning. They said I should come and see the President, so I went, too."<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHQ5f0MDgCeN2ASb5ajwRaCenoXZEmhluwFuE-jGDzTAu32oebJikxVgFv4NFRzCAEjcSELXk2beMmk039Qiwyqs74cPH8NLAEQEtikvLCzl6g4N8FIdQ9C8NN2AM9vh-Zk4QArGbFjX4/s1600/adolphus.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHQ5f0MDgCeN2ASb5ajwRaCenoXZEmhluwFuE-jGDzTAu32oebJikxVgFv4NFRzCAEjcSELXk2beMmk039Qiwyqs74cPH8NLAEQEtikvLCzl6g4N8FIdQ9C8NN2AM9vh-Zk4QArGbFjX4/s320/adolphus.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The Adolphus Hotel today. Note the balcony awning.</i></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><br /></i></td></tr>
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<br />"We climbed through the windows on the second floor and stepped out on the awning just as the motorcycles started coming down the street. The President's car was right up front and we saw him and Jackie and all the other people."<br /><br />"Now, the President would do this thing where he'd point to a group of people on the sidewalk and they'd all wave and he'd wave back at them. And he kept doing this as their car drove down the street. And then he pointed up at the awning with all of us standing there, and we all started waving back at him. I was surprised I was waving, because I didn't really like the guy."<br /><br />"So, then the cars all passed by and we started climbing back in the windows to go downstairs and open for lunch. So I'm the last one downstairs. As I'm walking down the stairs, I think to myself: why don't I like that guy? He seems like a nice man, he has a pretty wife, they both seem really happy. I could like that guy!"</i><br />
<br />
<i>"As I walk into the bar area, we had a TV on that was showing the parade. All of a sudden, the man on the TV said the President's been shot. And I think to myself: I really just got to like that guy, and now he's dead."</i><br />
<br />
I've been writing articles and essays about the Kennedy assassination since I was twelve years old. There's a whole industry of conspiracy crazies who debate testimony and evidence Oswald acted alone. After decades of reading all the theories and seeing the places where events occurred, the only rational conclusion I think anyone can draw is that Oswald imagined himself to be a revolutionary and had the unfortunate luck of working in a tall building on a day when the President of the United States would be driving by his office. Fifty years of arguments hasn't made a compelling case against Oswald's guilt, and I've decided not to write about the subject any more. <br />
<br />
As to the minutiae that people argue about: I think it's all based on the same thing Chris said: we all really just got to know the President, and now he's dead. It's therapy, not revelation.Jim O'Kanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01806624628546492210noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6952925068925494892.post-59371781332404863152013-05-16T22:47:00.000-07:002013-05-17T07:30:25.894-07:00Edith Keeler Must Die<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLZjTQhKLwH0KDXReQmGAiU2rFluJ0HJG5h-uaZQ9Hk-8PSee2x8KdrIPPnOA-pI0SnhycfA8ATQKf6CO8034lyS-2CiR12Hol6K9SVCmjQu3TJPQJN4JlhUtMILnBCwlWCUFiV6-q9DQ/s1600/stid4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLZjTQhKLwH0KDXReQmGAiU2rFluJ0HJG5h-uaZQ9Hk-8PSee2x8KdrIPPnOA-pI0SnhycfA8ATQKf6CO8034lyS-2CiR12Hol6K9SVCmjQu3TJPQJN4JlhUtMILnBCwlWCUFiV6-q9DQ/s640/stid4.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Don't copy-paste legends</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
I saw the midnight premiere of <i></i><i>Star Trek: Into Darkness</i> early Thursday morning. The initial 2009 reboot of the franchise was an intriguing blend of classic Star Trek motifs through a 21st Century sensibility, so I thought I'd enjoy this continuation of the new films even more than the kickoff movie.<br />
<br />
As I soon discovered, that idea was a colossal miscalculation.<br />
<br />
Yes, it's obvious that the franchise needs to be geared toward a mass audience, and a market of Star Trek aficionados simply can't pay enough in ticket purchases to offset the costs incurred by Paramount every time the studio mounts one of these productions. The movies, therefore, have to follow a strict diet of predictable action, adventure, pretty people, and explodey stuff in order to maintain ticket sales and repeat business. <br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjGrGt4NIfL0-cAktJiZysVl681Z2CvaQ93mTllhRyandmu9AijKOxCgvknLoZwd0j9sDAU-wfRuTDiCNr9Fq2k1r_yq77BQ3jXg0WCumbbMaTUwbQwqKE-ArYpbfGARnHSnDbIbzzpoc/s1600/stid1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="346" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjGrGt4NIfL0-cAktJiZysVl681Z2CvaQ93mTllhRyandmu9AijKOxCgvknLoZwd0j9sDAU-wfRuTDiCNr9Fq2k1r_yq77BQ3jXg0WCumbbMaTUwbQwqKE-ArYpbfGARnHSnDbIbzzpoc/s640/stid1.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This is a mandatory, yet completely unessential, three-second scene that fulfilled <br />
Paramount's requirements for "a sexy new Star Trek." </td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Yet, there still has to be something of the heart of Star Trek-type stories to consider these films part of the Star Trek universe. Director J.J. Abrams doesn't seem to agree with this idea, as evidenced by the plot of the latest adventure of Captain Kirk & company.<br />
<br />
Abrams famously stated he was never a Star Trek fan growing up, and really never watched much of the series until he was hired to direct the first reboot film. It's almost a matter of pride to him that he had no love for Trek as a child, and this lack of affection seems to percolate through the latest film.<br />
<i><br /></i><b>Note:</b><i> before I continue any further, I want to assure you that I do not want to spoil any plot elements for people who haven't seen the movie, so I'm going to talk in general terms about the problems in this film. My criticisms will probably make more sense after you've seen the movie, but I think it's important to view the film without having any plot surprises ruined for you.</i><br />
<br />
The attitude of the script seems to be that it was written by someone who screened several key episodes of Star Trek and watched a few of the films, but had no idea about the personalities of the characters mentioned in the shows. It's as if they had watched "City on the Edge of Forever," and then decided to rewrite Edith Keeler as a Romulan spy. Sure, everyone in the film is saying the same catchphrases that resonate from earlier episodes and films, but the screenwriter Damon Lindelof doesn't seem to understand <i>why</i> the characters say the things they do. The ignorance of the <i>why</i> part turns the phrases into gibberish, or worse, unintended comedy. <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZkoSHEy9d3c_er8S1BVXA7x347Z8puF1imgBYXAb5xWWpM_QUMAi8WWRSYVpuaHFRrhVNnbsGsauNIdaWoANYIoY3nunUFERj5w32PRa1W4Eg3yiX4PpNcc7ilbdA2fU_uPP_cd28mmE/s1600/stid3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="385" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZkoSHEy9d3c_er8S1BVXA7x347Z8puF1imgBYXAb5xWWpM_QUMAi8WWRSYVpuaHFRrhVNnbsGsauNIdaWoANYIoY3nunUFERj5w32PRa1W4Eg3yiX4PpNcc7ilbdA2fU_uPP_cd28mmE/s640/stid3.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Squire of Gothos? Cadet Finnegan? Sure, pick a TOS villain and cast Cumberbatch in the role.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
You don't have to be a Trekkie to know the basic rules of Star Trek: Kirk makes bold decisions, Spock's favorite word is "logic," guys in red shirts don't live long. But the characters and their interactions were more complex than superficial features. Even the guest stars on the old TV show had backstories that explained their reasons for doing things: Commodore Decker was driven by guilt over the loss of his crew to attack the Planet Killer in a shuttlecraft; Khan Noonian Singh was the pride-drunk leader of a remnant of 20th Century supermen whose weakness was his arrogance; Commander Balok was a master of deception because his diminutive race had previous run-ins with aggressive species. The aliens and opponents the crew of the Enterprise faced each week had motives and desires that made sense in the context of the plot of every show. <br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAUvi1ZONGDsvTu33dRbLjJ4JosXAFhSvwaWScqshlthE1JPGUCuZlPn0lPqNFEJk7jybPfSRQIj8et6VE3UJsvtByD6FVHLeNs1tIfWEWSjTODqinE9N5MjieeJXXA_dtUn7OcHCVe4I/s1600/stid7.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAUvi1ZONGDsvTu33dRbLjJ4JosXAFhSvwaWScqshlthE1JPGUCuZlPn0lPqNFEJk7jybPfSRQIj8et6VE3UJsvtByD6FVHLeNs1tIfWEWSjTODqinE9N5MjieeJXXA_dtUn7OcHCVe4I/s640/stid7.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">May the Force be with you, Frodo. Epic misunderstanding of a franchise.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<i>Star Trek Into Darkness</i>? Not so much. The biggest failure of the film is the outright looting of previous Star Trek characters and situations in order to evoke audience nostalgia for those original TV and film moments. We're given a bad guy named John Harrison (Benedict Cumberbatch) who turns out to be a character from the TV show - - except this character doesn't act anything like the original character. When dialog from the original character's appearance is repeated in this film, then, it doesn't quite make sense with what we see on screen. Imagine, for example, having a Klingon suddenly appear on screen without introduction and shout "HARCOURT FENTON MUDD!" at Mr. Spock - - - it's almost at that level of incoherence. <br />
<br />
The motivations of the villains are breathtakingly shallow. They are bad guys simply because the script needed bad guys at certain points in the film. New locations crop up only because the Enterprise crew required a new place for fight scenes scheduled at regular intervals in the movie, and the previous venues had been destroyed during earlier fights. Ships are destroyed, crash, and somehow fly again because they're needed for the next battle scene. In one particularly absurd moment, a starship, already blown up by <i>six dozen photon torpedoes</i>, reappears for another barrage of phaser fire. <br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCRKiSo9ZgS1ccTxfiVaO5ryB58cUCSmH26d_4zkMJPvdR5L8M88nVoNq3By-UPkgd7pMC4fqr5fLV2gseP4LQOlZbq16n-K-zYM-6-c5hzh7Jm3Ngjpnv-GFmbJRnt_JnuJueUaMBZ_8/s1600/stid6.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="384" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCRKiSo9ZgS1ccTxfiVaO5ryB58cUCSmH26d_4zkMJPvdR5L8M88nVoNq3By-UPkgd7pMC4fqr5fLV2gseP4LQOlZbq16n-K-zYM-6-c5hzh7Jm3Ngjpnv-GFmbJRnt_JnuJueUaMBZ_8/s640/stid6.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Don't worry, it's only a scratch.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The biggest problem (and I'm going to be as vague as I can so as not to spoil anything) is the lack of loss in this film. Yes, there are deaths of characters, but the solutions to otherwise fatal situations are telegraphed so early and often in this film that the audience doesn't care when people fall off the roofs of speeding cars, or get shot, or have their ships blown up around them. There is no peril that can't be erased, and without the high stakes of life or death, character mortality is no more of a concern than losing a turn during a Super Mario Bros game. <br />
<br />
I could continue with nitpicking the howling continuity errors, the usurption of the laws of physics, and the over-reliance of jam-packing every single scene with floating debris and shuddering camera angles, but those points don't begin to match the immensity of the ineptness of the script. This is a Star Trek film, mostly in the sense that Paramount owns the intellectual property and that the character names are the same as those used in the original Roddenberry series. It is <i>not</i> a Star Trek film, though, in any aspect where it's supposed to match the quality of the original series' story-telling, or show respect for the characters and their motivations. It's an auto-tuned version of Star Trek, replete with mandatory set pieces to please the ticket-buying audiences of the world. I'm not saying it wasn't a fun movie - - it's just not really about Star Trek anymore. If Edith Keeler must die, the reason shouldn't be so that there's a satisfying explosion at the end of the film. <br />
<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpm7onj7umd7P0YCYgr8RbWhtSRK5Keisr-m9r7FRkBaZVWodndxNdnZT5IeQMVE2Jy8V0M1NSW1jVARF4zUF6xeboFpe9QayT84IIEMbWai1awRKZTbwTVnXvKwqB-74RpijsBW9fPfE/s1600/stid5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpm7onj7umd7P0YCYgr8RbWhtSRK5Keisr-m9r7FRkBaZVWodndxNdnZT5IeQMVE2Jy8V0M1NSW1jVARF4zUF6xeboFpe9QayT84IIEMbWai1awRKZTbwTVnXvKwqB-74RpijsBW9fPfE/s640/stid5.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Let's cram some more merchandise onboard, shall we?</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />Jim O'Kanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01806624628546492210noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6952925068925494892.post-89509896683887171432013-05-14T22:34:00.000-07:002013-05-14T22:34:08.166-07:00Last of the First<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXZ-L8emoOlvl5KYHkOGUwlPYlDWRcKQbhTS5i1gLhaEEm1LB2ENeEj5D9A0l3-BVQaBk67BkzY05kqBL99GXtRcZhc1hiCPm-I3xKg8UlARYxZzjm1i-eQa0EEvKeQP6jjo2yKmhypwo/s1600/ma9.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="363" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXZ-L8emoOlvl5KYHkOGUwlPYlDWRcKQbhTS5i1gLhaEEm1LB2ENeEj5D9A0l3-BVQaBk67BkzY05kqBL99GXtRcZhc1hiCPm-I3xKg8UlARYxZzjm1i-eQa0EEvKeQP6jjo2yKmhypwo/s640/ma9.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">MA-9. the final Mercury flight</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSaGabTnWYCiyUbKABixZq3CfuHyYU1YbBnkY7DDEjH5TRZOK5_JeJMa-J4RUAxKBnlwuYjom4bfv0bSo1tRG5l3ieGbZESaL8el54bkJTrbImzkCHcg0g0UE7E16QDIGaBtllAg6tp1s/s1600/ma9.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a></div>
Last year, my erudite buddy <a href="http://brianfies.blogspot.com/2012/02/oh-view-is-tremendous.html" target="_blank">Brian Fies</a> and I were discussing (via blogs) that the next few years were going to be chock-a-bloc with 50th anniversaries of the Space Age. May 15th, 2013 marks yet another golden anniversary - - this time an ending, rather than a beginning. <br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2fyjcqz5iylVodl7FJvVdEhqyCWZyqFIozhI57r1JSEN3HJsdwYOUbClmYKJFug9K2oxspsTdL6egU30R6uK2IuX7Oexup6i2a9iEZakK33wwAp3wJT_e9EcEfyOk8RI_rMS2NrM83Us/s1600/merclaunches.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="271" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2fyjcqz5iylVodl7FJvVdEhqyCWZyqFIozhI57r1JSEN3HJsdwYOUbClmYKJFug9K2oxspsTdL6egU30R6uK2IuX7Oexup6i2a9iEZakK33wwAp3wJT_e9EcEfyOk8RI_rMS2NrM83Us/s320/merclaunches.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mandatory image of all manned Mercury launches</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The Mercury 7 astronauts were the trailblazers of the American space program. In just six flights (Deke Slayton was sidelined with a heart murmur), the Mercury astronauts tested their vehicles, their navigation skills, and even their own bodies as lone pilots in space. Although NASA moved ahead with construction of the Gemini two-man vehicle and the Apollo moonship, the results of the Mercury program's flight data would shape all manned space programs to come. <br /><br />Alan Shepard rode his Mercury craft in a parabolic suborbital flight lasting just fifteen minutes. John Glenn's first orbital flight lasted just a little over four hours. As the Mercury mission continued, the flight durations lengthened. <br /><br />By May of 1963, NASA felt ready to attempt a 24-hour flight in space. Preparations for such a long-duration mission required the removal of the ship's periscope to provide room for extra oxygen tanks and batteries to power the instruments. To offset the weight of the extra batteries, redundant attitude thrusters were removed from the nose of the ship. NASA engineers decided that since the primary thrusters had proven reliable, backup thrusters were no longer necessary.<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTsRShSvmGCmauW0NX1dsYAw1tHjT8w9XqvTMg4_sOipLiT7VtqTO5IgwpKojbXae0JKdkSWCWoLurQehd7GbAvbrF__5DjSCDTCmt3KGCCrVX7T2onv802aRgtu8_z3N0EciPezMhJ6o/s1600/coopertv.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="244" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTsRShSvmGCmauW0NX1dsYAw1tHjT8w9XqvTMg4_sOipLiT7VtqTO5IgwpKojbXae0JKdkSWCWoLurQehd7GbAvbrF__5DjSCDTCmt3KGCCrVX7T2onv802aRgtu8_z3N0EciPezMhJ6o/s320/coopertv.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cooper was the first American astronaut to be seen<br />on video, live from space.</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Just after 8:04am on May 15, 2013, astronaut Gordon Cooper's MA-9 spacecraft <i>Faith 7</i> lifted off from Cape Canaveral. Cooper had a full plate of experiments to run through in this mission: tracking a blinking ball that was jettisoned overboard during the first orbit, examining atmospheric drag effects on a tethered balloon trailing the spaceship, collecting blood and urine samples after trying a variety of foodstuffs to see if there were any problems metabolizing things like powdered roast beef or chocolate brownies. The experiments resulted in varied levels of success: Cooper spotted the blinking ball, the balloon never deployed, Cooper didn't open the brownies out of fear that floating crumbs would damage the instruments. <br /><br />The astronaut managed to doze off for several orbits as the first day in space drew to a close. With his ship powered down to conserve fuel and electricity, <i>Faith 7</i> drifted lazily along its prescribed path. On the 30th orbit, the first signs of trouble with the ship popped up - - a small panel light indicated that the ship detected a minute change in the g-forces that would signal the beginning of reentry. <br /><br />
<div style="text-align: right;">
</div>
Cooper believed the signal was an instrumentation flaw, and ground controllers confirmed that there had been no change to the orbit. During the next orbit, the situation began to deteriorate rapidly. The main circuit buss for the instrument panel shorted out, knocking all navigation controls offline. Cooper was left with a radio, his wristwatch, and his eyeballs to navigate his 17,500 mph ship.<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOfnLz387OJzMN7agYRLaGKGH6vbJ29rZMcyaAvWdXYg4BUtZC4bLzHwcxPbIwSH6qdUPGyNRzOevM-9W-hRBGRMwYauuiE4d-WEyNtT5Uisnr4hw5H-3gixjw2KdSVEhHKtHOz5gRpzM/s1600/ma9recovery.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOfnLz387OJzMN7agYRLaGKGH6vbJ29rZMcyaAvWdXYg4BUtZC4bLzHwcxPbIwSH6qdUPGyNRzOevM-9W-hRBGRMwYauuiE4d-WEyNtT5Uisnr4hw5H-3gixjw2KdSVEhHKtHOz5gRpzM/s320/ma9recovery.jpg" width="224" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mission accomplished</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Fortunately, NASA had trained Cooper for just such an emergency. In contact with John Glenn at the Mercury Control Center, Cooper twisted manual thrust knobs on the sole attitude control system and aligned his retrorockets using a visual gauge on the ship's porthole aimed at the horizon of the Earth. With his stopwatch, Cooper called out a countdown that matched the calculations Glenn had passed up to him from ground controllers. Cooper opened a manual valve as the countdown reached zero, and his three retrorockets fired. Less than twenty minutes later, <i>Faith 7</i> was bobbing in the Atlantic Ocean, only 4.4 miles from the recovery ship <i>Kearsarge</i>, -- the closest landing of any Mecury spacecraft to its intended target. <br /><br />Gordon Cooper would be the last American to launch into orbit by himself, and, until Dave Scott became Command Module Pilot of Apollo 9 in April of 1969, the last American to pilot his own spacecraft in orbit by himself. Project Mercury ended, and was soon eclipsed by the greater challenges of the Gemini missions. May 15th, 1963, though, was the end of America's first tentative steps into space.<br />
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<br /><br /><br />Jim O'Kanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01806624628546492210noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6952925068925494892.post-53866645821478114642013-05-13T21:26:00.003-07:002013-05-13T21:31:46.758-07:00A House in Space<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmeyeKPB5EUuC9J2yQj_X9hgLRHRRbKbM8fPrAaaz0EGLgke2y3pU_fWSMxZmqWq9vRNbxi6HwGKoaF4MV64pyb-Jni6gQOoxwSU5ReF_AmZ15UhdJ_nX2Eh2VPhIbcyHgRqt9YzKXkbE/s1600/skylab.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmeyeKPB5EUuC9J2yQj_X9hgLRHRRbKbM8fPrAaaz0EGLgke2y3pU_fWSMxZmqWq9vRNbxi6HwGKoaF4MV64pyb-Jni6gQOoxwSU5ReF_AmZ15UhdJ_nX2Eh2VPhIbcyHgRqt9YzKXkbE/s400/skylab.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">An amazing machine, despite all its difficulties.</td></tr>
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Forty years ago, I lived about fifty miles north of New York City, in a
little town just far away enough from Manhattan for the light pollution
to dim and for the Milky Way to shine in the night sky. I didn't know
many kids in town as I had just moved there over the previous Christmas,
so I spent a lot of time in the evening just enjoying the brilliant
stars overhead.</div>
<br />
The Moon missions were over. With the
cancellation of Apollos 18-20, I didn't think there would be another
lunar landing until after I was out of high school. On May 14th, the
final Saturn V would launch NASA's Skylab orbital workshop into space. I
managed to talk a guidance counselor at my school into letting me watch the
launch on a school TV during lunch time. It looked like this:<br />
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After the Saturn disappeared into the cloud deck, horrible things started to happen. The micrometeroid shield running the length of the converted S-IV-B stage sheared off the side of the lab, yanking one of the extensible solar panels with it. The remnant cables of the missing solar panel coiled around the ship, knotting over the other solar panel and preventing its deployment. It would take two of the three planned missions to repair the Skylab enough for it to do many of the experiments for which it was designed. </div>
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Despite the near-disaster at launch, Skylab proved to be a remarkable workshop. By the end of the program, the United States had gained an 84-day record of continuous habitation in space. Many of the lessons learned would be put to use decades later on both Shuttle missions and in the construction of the International Space Station. <br />
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There's lots of minutiae to talk about in the history of Skylab but I just wanted to mention something I experienced with my own eyes. Before the first crew arrived at the station at the end of May, 1973, there was a detailed series of articles in the New York <i>Times</i> about what had gone wrong with the ship, and what the plan for the repairs would be. At the end of the article, there was a list of viewing times in the NY area for spotting both Skylab and the S-II Saturn stage that had pushed the ship into orbit. I remember standing in my front yard in the darkness, waiting to see if anything would be visible in the night sky. <br />
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Suddenly a dim bead of light appeared from the southwest, followed by another, much brighter light traveling at about the same speed. The S-II was slightly ahead of Skylab, as it was continuing in a slightly lower (and therefore faster) orbit. I had never seen two objects orbiting the Earth at the same time, and it struck me that this would probably be a common sight when I was older, as the sky filled with many orbiting Shuttles and stations.<br />
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I was wrong about the number of ships I'd see, but I was correct that I'd see multiple ships in space at the same time in my old age. By 2009, I was living in Massachusetts, and I remembered the Skylab flyover from so many years ago as I watched the Space Shuttle Discovery maneuver to dock with the International Space Station. <br />
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The ISS outshines the accomplishments of Skylab in just about every way, but Skylab's pioneering experiences (both operationally and in its repair) made the later achievements of the ISS possible. <br />
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<br />Jim O'Kanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01806624628546492210noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6952925068925494892.post-63736800706328747662013-05-13T09:59:00.000-07:002014-01-01T21:22:18.486-08:00And the stars look very different todayThe Internet is agog with the release of Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield's video cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity" - - a musical interpretation filmed almost entirely onboard the International Space Station. <br />
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Hadfield is seen floating in the Tranquility module's cupola, the
Japanese Kibo module, and the hatchway to a waiting Soyuz spacecraft. A
unattended, velcro-studded guitar spins languidly through the station, while Hadfield sings lyrics of a space pilot surrounded by technology, viewing a Universe beyond all imaginings.<br />
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When people think about the "importance" of manned space flight, it's usually about having someone on hand to repair broken equipment and second-guess computer errors far from home. The true reason people are in space, I believe, is for moments such as this video. We need people in space to interpret and humanize the exploration so that we, as a planet, can share the experience. Folks like Chris Hadfield take the known (a Bowie song, a guitar, a piano) and show us the unknown (looking out the window and seeing a planet) with the reference point of our culture. It's why everyone remembers Alan Shepard's golf shots on the Moon during Apollo 14. It's why we still watch archival footage of Dave Scott and Jim Irwin driving the first lunar rover across the Moon's surface during the Apollo 15 trip. It's even why Ron Howard made the Apollo 13 movie - - when something goes wrong in space, the only time we really care is if there are people onboard. <br />
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Hopefully, someday before the centennial of human spaceflight, a human being will make a cover video of David Bowie's "<i>Life on Mars?</i>" -- from the surface of that planet. Certainly another cultural moment everyone on our planet will enjoy.Jim O'Kanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01806624628546492210noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6952925068925494892.post-25305359698179711872013-04-12T14:38:00.003-07:002013-04-12T14:40:07.102-07:00"Поехали!"<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Yuri Alexevich Gagarin<br />
First Man in Space</td></tr>
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It was a political act. It had little to do with piloting. It was a dangerous stunt that almost cost a man his life, but it was the moment that began all manned spaceflight that followed. Fifty-two years ago today, Yuri Gagarin was strapped into an eight-foot-wide, aluminum-alloy sphere and launched into Earth orbit.<br />
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Gagarin was a tiny fellow, barely 5' 2". He was assigned the mission mostly because he didn't add much to the payload of the automated spacecraft. Sergei Korolev, the Chief Designer of the Soviet space program, said a final command to him before Gagarin climbed into the spacecraft: "Come back."<br />
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The ship Gagarin rode into space was called Vostok, which means "East" but also carries the idea of "Dawn" - - the beginning of a new day. The Vostok wasn't originally designed as a crewed spaceship - - Korolev's engineers based its construction on the requirements for a reconnaissance satellite, capable of hoisting several hundred pounds of cameras, lenses, and film into orbit. The ship was supposed to counter the American Corona project, which was already returning miles of photographic intelligence about Soviet air bases back to the CIA. Korolev managed to tack on the manned aspect of Vostok as a selling point to the Soviet politburo, who liked the secondary role for what it was: a great tool for propaganda about "space exploration," while concealing Vostok's primary purpose as a spy ship.<span id="goog_1660402897"></span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">1:4 scale model of Vostok at the Kansas Cosmosphere.<br />
Service Module at left, Descent Sphere at right.</td></tr>
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Because Vostok's chief purpose was for unmanned missions, the control and operation of the ship was entirely automatic. A cosmonaut's role as pilot, then, was superfluous. Korolev worried about "interference" by pilots during flight, so the onboard controls were locked down with a password. As a compromise between the designers and the flight controllers, the ship carried a sealed envelope containing the manual override code. Cosmonauts were forbidden to open the envelope without approval from the mission operators back on Earth. I'm not exactly sure how they would stop a cosmonaut from opening the envelope.<br />
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<h3>
Launch Day</h3>
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On the morning of April 12th, 1961, Yuri Gagarin rode a bus to the base of the R-7 rocket that would launch his Vostok into the sky. He saluted Korolev, shook hands with several ground support personnel, and then climbed a ladder up to the Vostok's hatch. The ground team screwed on the hatch, and then needed to remove and reseat the hatch when they noticed it hadn't quite sealed properly. At 8:07am local Baikonur Time, the twenty engines of the R-7 Semyorka booster ignited, and Gagarin's ship lifted off the pad. He shouted "Поехали!" ("pyoucali!" or "Let's go!") into his microphone as the ship cleared the launch site.<br />
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Six minutes after launch, both the boosters and the protective cover around Gagarin's ship separated from Vostok 1. The cosmonaut's first opportunity to view the Earth from space revealed a cloud-covered morning over central Russia. "I can see the Earth. The visibility is good. I can almost see
everything. There's a certain amount of space under the cumulus cloud cover," he reported back to Baikonur before flying out of radio range. <br />
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Unlike the American network of ships and ground stations spread across the world, the Soviet program had only a small group of ships scattered along Gagarin's intended flightpath. With limited data being returned to the control site, Korolev's people weren't sure if Vostok was in a stable orbit for nearly a half hour after launch.<br />
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Things were equally mysterious for Gagarin. Since he had only a few instruments to inform him about his ship's status, Gagarin could only rely on whatever information the ground controllers could radio to him during the brief moments when they were in touch via the relay ships. As he flew within communications range of a radar station in southeastern Siberia, Gagarin asked, "What can you tell me about the flight? What can you tell me?" The station radioed back that they had nothing to report and that Korolev (code-named "Number Twenty") had no instructions for him. Vostok-1 continued its flight as it headed down the length of the Pacific Ocean.<br />
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At the half-way point over the Straits of Magellan, the Vostok attitude control system identified the Sun rising in the eastern sky. The ship aligned itself for retrofire, arming the service module's sole remaining engine. Korolev's mission designers had an unusual backup plan in the event of the rocket's failure during reentry: the selected orbit would decay naturally in 7-10 days, so they loaded Gagarin's crew module with a week's worth of food and oxygen to wait out the "organic" landing mode.<br />
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Fortunately, the retrorocket ignited successfully, chopping the orbital parameters to intersect with a ground track down to Siberia. Immediately after retrofire, though, came the mission's greatest failure. The service module containing the navigation and propellant equipment failed to detach from the descent sphere. As the upper atmosphere began to buffet the two modules, the sphere began to whip around the service module at an ever-increasing rate. Gagarin was experiencing more than 8 g's of lateral force, compounded by the deceleration effects of the atmospheric reentry. Ground controllers lost contact with the ship as it passed over Egypt. They wouldn't be able to communicate until the Vostok ship passed through the ionization layer.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ejection tube of Vostok ship.<br />
Kansas Cosmosphere</td></tr>
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The buffeting snapped the connection between the service and descent modules, and Gagarin's ship managed to right itself to deploy the ship's parachute. As the ship approached an altitude of 23,000 feet, the cosmonaut ejected from the descent module, just as cameras and film would be jettisoned on unmanned reconnaissance missions. Gagarin descended separately from his ship because Korolev's spacecraft designers couldn't figure out how to build a parachute capable of landing both payload and ship safely. It was an embarrassing compromise for Korolev, and this aspect of the mission plan was kept from the West for decades. <br />
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In the Saratov region of western Siberia, two farm girls saw a pair of parachutes descending overhead. A man suspended by one of the parachutes landed on a nearby hill. Dressed in an orange suit with a large white helmet, the farm girls began to back away as he approached. They had heard about the American pilot Gary Powers and didn't want to be involved with another spy pilot. "Don't be afraid!" yelled Gagarin, lifting his visor. "I'm Russian!" Gagarin's 25,000 mile flight ended on a Siberian farm a little more than an hour and a half after it began.<br />
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Fifty two years later, the world celebrates the birth of manned spaceflight with <a href="http://yurisnight.net/#/home" target="_blank">Yuri's Night</a>, a series of parties and star-gazing that anyone is free to join in and participate. Although Americans tend to ignore the achievements of other nations in space, this is truly an international event to appreciate. Gagarin's quick jaunt into space motivated Americans to reach for the Moon, and built the foundation for the world's cooperative program: the International Space Station. Go and enjoy Yuri's Night tonight, and think about the little guy who took that first flight.<br />
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Jim O'Kanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01806624628546492210noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6952925068925494892.post-24936097838452961712013-04-04T21:45:00.000-07:002013-04-06T15:51:06.412-07:00Collectibles<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Just say Dr. No.</td></tr>
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My friend Mark collects astonishing amounts of James Bond memorabilia. He's got Spanish one-sheets of <i>Goldfinger</i>, and first editions of <i>On Her Majesty's Secret Service</i>. Autographed pictures of Sean Connery and Roger Moore adorn his office walls, and somewhere in a climate-controlled warehouse in Montana, I'm sure he has a couple of prop guns from <i>You Only Live Twice</i>. It's an expensive hobby, but when people have disposable income, it's human nature to collect things. <br />
Probably one of the most common parlor games is to imagine what you'd do if you had, say, $100 million to spend on a hobby. What would you buy? Where would you go? One man's answer to these questions made the news this week, and it involved a bit of space history. What a perfect excuse to talk way too much about rocket ships from long ago.<br />
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<h3>
ABMA and ARPA</h3>
If you'll recall, a while back <a href="http://jimokane.blogspot.com/2011/09/day-space-age-didnt-start.html" target="_blank">I talked about </a>Wernher von Braun's missile men and the political obstacles they faced in launching the first American satellite.The Army, Navy, and Air Force were simultaneously developing missile systems, and the expensive research work was becoming redundant. In 1956, Secretary of Defense Charles Wilson ordered the Army to turn over all ICBM development with a range of more than 200 miles to the Air Force. <br />
Here's the problem: von Braun's team at the Army Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA) would now be limited to regional rockets - - their Jupiter missile was far outside the range of Wilson's 200-mile range limit. ABMA could continue to work on their research, but needed to cripple their performance to be permitted further tests. These restrictions, of course, went out the window when Sputnik launched and the Navy's Vanguard program failed to get an American satellite into orbit. The ABMA team put <a href="http://jimokane.blogspot.com/2013/01/thirty-pounds-of-science.html" target="_blank">America's Explorer I satellite</a> into orbit on the last day of January, 1958. <br />
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Let's back up a little bit. While all the slicing and dicing of the service branches' rocket labs was going on, the DoD had unofficially created another task force, the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), whose mission was to figure out what new technologies would be needed by the Space Age military. Through ARPA, the DoD spotted a need for a heavy-lift vehicle that could put giant communications and reconnaissance satellites into orbit. The launch vehicles would need to be able to haul twenty tons of payload into low Earth orbit, or push six tons of payload into interplanetary space. What exactly the military needed with interplanetary missiles wasn't explained.<br />
While all this was getting sorted out between what the Army would be working on and what the Air Force would control, von Braun noticed a loophole in the DoD orders. Secretary of Defense Wilson's directives only applied to <i>weapons</i>, not space vehicles. If von Braun's Army team concentrated on scientific research and not just short-range rocket bombs, they'd be in the clear for building orbital launch vehicles.<br />
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</h3>
<h3>
A Technological Dead End</h3>
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As mentioned in an earlier post, the von Braun Redstone was a direct engineering descendant of the German V-2 rocket. The fuel pumps, the tank plumbing, even the thrust steering vanes built into the exhaust plumes were modifications of the WWII-era rocket bombs. There was no easy way to scale this design into a ship big enough to throw twenty-ton spaceships into orbit. <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Heinz-Hermann Koelle, Rocket Guy</td></tr>
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Dr. von Braun turned to Heinz-Hermann Koelle, a former Luftwaffe pilot, mechanical engineer and pen pal of von Braun after the war, to examine ways of turning the experience of building Redstone and Jupiter missiles into a sort of "Super Jupiter" that could approach the heavy lift requirements of ARPA. Koelle figured a quick way to build such a vehicle would be to lash eight Redstones around a central Jupiter core and fire up all the engines simultaneously. The only problem with that design was that the thrust of the Redstone engines was limited to 350 kiloNewtons, completely insufficient for doing any heavy lifting. <br />
Koelle considered a new, monster 1,600 kN engine Rocketdyne was working on called the E-1. The E-1 was being designed for the Air Force Titan I missile, but Rocketdyne was having problems getting the E-1's fuel pump to work right. The Air Force changed their mind due to the development delays and went with an Aerojet General engine for the Titan instead. <br />
Although Koelle liked the E-1 design, the delay in engine development didn't work any better for him than it did for the Air Force Titan project. Koelle began looking for other options.<br />
While Koelle was trying to find a solution to the engine question, the Army decided to hand off large rocket development to the newly-formed NASA. ABMA would become NASA's George Marshall Space Flight Center, and the work on the Super Jupiter (now called "Saturn," as the new name meant it was "the next thing after Jupiter") would be a NASA project. All the engines, 'E' and above, would become NASA projects.<br />
Koelle's quest for a quicker replacement for the E-1 on Saturn led him to the Rocketdyne H-1 rocket engine, a smaller (778kN) machine originally designed for the USAF Titan that was close to being tested in development. The ARPA folks told von Braun that ABMA would have to use or lose $10 million in the development budget before the switchover to NASA -- so von Braun and Koelle cobbled together a quick plan to improve the thrust to 890kN, enough for eight engines to match the ARPA requirements for the Saturn I.<br />
<h3>
Go Big or Go Home </h3>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Saturn IB's under construction. <br />
Lots and lots of H-1 engines required. </td></tr>
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The configuration of H-1s remained an imperfect solution. Eight engines meant that there were eight fuel pumps, eight lines of propellant, eight lines of oxidizers and eight times the number of opportunities for equipment failure. <br />
Creating anything more powerful in the Saturn series would require larger, fewer engines. There was no point in chasing the E-1: a 1,600kN engine wouldn't be enough for the missions von Braun had in mind. The von Braun team turned to the next development project in the Rocketdyne catalog: the F-1 engine.<br />
The F-1 was mind-boggling in comparison to all previous engine designs. F-1 was planned as generating not 890kN, or even the 1,600kN of the now-scrapped E-1 - - the F-1 was to provide 8,600 kN of thrust. Lashing five of these monsters to the base of a new rocket would generate <i>thirty-four million</i> Newtons, enough to toss 100,000 lbs of payload out of Earth orbit. <br />
The enormous size of the F-1 magnified the development issues with the engine, primarily with resolving combustion instability problems from acoustic oscillations. Being bell-shaped, just about every rocket engine has specific harmonics that form pressure waves when burning propellant. On the F-1, horrific shuddering at 4khz would cause the fuel not to just burn, but to detonate inside the engine bell, destroying the whole mechanism in a sudden explosion. Huntsville engineers took seven years to figure out how to cancel out the oscillations, going so far as to set off bombs of C4 explosive inside the engine bell after ignition to see if their modifications were effective. <br />
<h3>
"Look at that Rocket Go!"</h3>
<br />
When the F-1s were finally cleared for flight, they were checked out in an "all-up" test launch of what was now called the Saturn V rocket, launching on the unmanned Apollo 4 mission of November 9, 1967. News media were present and were stationed at the new launch complex 39A, located on Merritt Island.<br />
Walter Cronkite, the veteran quarterback of CBS News coverage in all things space-related, was in a portable trailer three miles from the launch site. He'd seen just about every manned launch at Cape Canaveral, and as a newsworthy event, this ranked as yet another routine unmanned test, though of an unusual size. As the countdown clock clicked to 0:00, Cronkite wondered if the giant beast would make it off the pad.<br />
Watch this video of the launch to hear Walter's first impression of the largest sound made by man that was not an atomic bomb:<br />
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The sound was unearthly. The sight of a building thirty-six stories tall rising into the sky and passing through the speed of sound was almost impossible for the mind to grasp. Yet, there it went, and the vehicle to take men to the Moon was ready.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUvjFPh98lrhzJoAX09xzJ1bJcnHxsxEBM5U-CyF8MF7bgecDbxhwOsoTkAi0E8_-hVnanIcC6YklrSgJ4D-ji-FGDqFi5VMZataUqkzdli2icS2brPnWjO956AgIvHnaOJPEj3Etf9aU/s1600/everysaturn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" class="" height="213" id="blogsy-1365179865535.2544" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUvjFPh98lrhzJoAX09xzJ1bJcnHxsxEBM5U-CyF8MF7bgecDbxhwOsoTkAi0E8_-hVnanIcC6YklrSgJ4D-ji-FGDqFi5VMZataUqkzdli2icS2brPnWjO956AgIvHnaOJPEj3Etf9aU/s400/everysaturn.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mandatory illustration of every Saturn V launch.</td></tr>
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Twelve Saturn Vs would head off the pad after Apollo 4 for the next six years, tossing 24 men to the Moon. The final launch of a Saturn V would be the liftoff of Skylab, America's first space station, in May of 1973. Although the destinations of the payloads were varied, all the 65 F-1 engines that powered the Saturns ended up in the same place: the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. The first stages of the Saturn V rockets weren't reusable, so the F-1s remained in their watery graves for the past 40 years.<br />
<h3>
A Treasure Hunt</h3>
And then, Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos decided he wanted to collect a few of the F-1s at the bottom of the Atlantic. Specifically, Bezos wanted to track down the engines that launched Apollo XI into space.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQsQ3iDAxZADxAWAMsbYaPAkjLGlIxnRjxPjuEnE-sK3_3jQmompzxyJP91pyTfchPWwdg7WSSCJymYUFqUs2zeTcohdJl38Cz6dPePbKZessbfIxuzS6zhZI6qFUST9RVufs-AXwJH5Y/s1600/bezosteam.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" class="" height="266" id="blogsy-1365179865604.368" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQsQ3iDAxZADxAWAMsbYaPAkjLGlIxnRjxPjuEnE-sK3_3jQmompzxyJP91pyTfchPWwdg7WSSCJymYUFqUs2zeTcohdJl38Cz6dPePbKZessbfIxuzS6zhZI6qFUST9RVufs-AXwJH5Y/s400/bezosteam.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Team Bezos</td></tr>
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This would be no easy task: NASA hadn't tracked the impact sites of the Saturn boosters, and apart from knowing the trajectories, nobody had a precise location for the individual stages. All the Saturn first stages (with the exception of Skylab, which launch to the northeast) landed in the ocean about 350 miles east of the launch pad. The overlapping rubble of used rockets would make identification difficult, even if the engines managed to survive a 500 mph impact with the ocean's surface.<br />
<br />
<h3>
Mission Accomplished </h3>
None of these difficulties seemed to deter Bezos. He and his extremely expensive crew of submarines scanned the ocean floor for months, finally returning radar images of twisted metal almost three miles underwater. Here's a look at what they found:<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGHbrzH1NaUygpgCd9efKfrYfhR4Wd66_7YhL4vWd0-__p4li_xmw57oWxZBSazBVwCE5-YEuauwVlAWYRFjMosIMC16w4TD-hxOaYlyEW6ixoNKglswGp9OYPG-reXpytArHDemLCiIc/s1600/bezossaturn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" class="" height="306" id="blogsy-1365179865541.7864" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGHbrzH1NaUygpgCd9efKfrYfhR4Wd66_7YhL4vWd0-__p4li_xmw57oWxZBSazBVwCE5-YEuauwVlAWYRFjMosIMC16w4TD-hxOaYlyEW6ixoNKglswGp9OYPG-reXpytArHDemLCiIc/s400/bezossaturn.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A piece of space history.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Smashed, but recognizable, Bezos's team discovered dozens of F-1 parts and chunks on the seabed. The crew hauled several up to the ship and brought them back to dry land for identification and restoration. So far, the team hasn't been able to identify complete serial numbers to tie the engines to a particular flight. Federal law dictates that all spacecraft equipment remains the property of NASA, but an agreement between Bezos and the space agency indicates that his expedition will be able to retain at least one F-1 engine for the Seattle Air & Space Museum, conveniently located in the Amazon HQ's back yard.<br />
I've read online discussions where some believe this expedition was a colossal waste of money. My feeling is: it's Bezos's money to waste, and if his collection inspires the next generation of space explorers, what's not to like?<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfvqNhIOL_q6sQ-UkdjEBKVjmy7_1AXtkQ_OxpqxhC14hfZ3imjEx1YyqRDbKN9U7-gbADnpSTnW57JNndemdS4Ntq0ZrhMkZaE07VFhZKtI4M-L7mqCxTMphaolSsKl85cyJy7tni3iE/s1600/mef1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" class="" height="400" id="blogsy-1365179865543.9285" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfvqNhIOL_q6sQ-UkdjEBKVjmy7_1AXtkQ_OxpqxhC14hfZ3imjEx1YyqRDbKN9U7-gbADnpSTnW57JNndemdS4Ntq0ZrhMkZaE07VFhZKtI4M-L7mqCxTMphaolSsKl85cyJy7tni3iE/s400/mef1.jpg" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The author with an F-1 engine. I'm 6' 1".</td></tr>
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Jim O'Kanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01806624628546492210noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6952925068925494892.post-33824210979456775372013-01-31T20:47:00.002-08:002014-01-31T22:08:42.266-08:00Thirty Pounds of SciencePreviously on <a href="http://jimokane.blogspot.com/2011/09/day-space-age-didnt-start.html" target="_blank">Citizen O'Kane</a>, I wrote about how the Soviets beat the United States into orbit because President Eisenhower didn't want to win the Space Race <a href="http://jimokane.blogspot.com/2011/09/day-space-age-didnt-start.html" target="_blank">on the shoulders of a reconstituted Nazi V-2 missile</a>. The von Braun team, based in Huntsville at the Redstone Arsenal, were forced to cripple their experimental rockets with payloads of sand instead of propellant, just to make sure a competing Navy Vanguard program would get dibs on the first orbital mission. <br />
<br />
After the October 4th, 1957 launch of the Soviet Sputnik satellite, all bets were off. Vanguard was nowhere near ready to be launched, and the Department of Defense gave the go-ahead to von Braun's rocket men to gear up for a launch as soon as possible. No more sand-bagged fourth stages, no more launch azimuths ending in the South Atlantic - - this time, the destination was Earth orbit.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEim9hIzw53fSYO35WHDkCLAj_pS1boSJ1CFD8wiU0F5N5AxHjx7CuAQSpBhV6xtQNP9-Xz6yratVkCfu6td5gk5jQrl20x2PgUP1WfV6WSSX7BdWGYFh56xFIgYzky0AGPn09CGePUTLCc/s1600/Explorer1_sketch.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEim9hIzw53fSYO35WHDkCLAj_pS1boSJ1CFD8wiU0F5N5AxHjx7CuAQSpBhV6xtQNP9-Xz6yratVkCfu6td5gk5jQrl20x2PgUP1WfV6WSSX7BdWGYFh56xFIgYzky0AGPn09CGePUTLCc/s640/Explorer1_sketch.jpg" height="256" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The back half was just a rocket motor that wasn't jettisoned,<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">out of concern it might bang into the payload in orbit.</td></tr>
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</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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The folks on the von Braun team also wanted to make the payload more than just a beeping radio transmitter. The goal needed to be science related to make the project more than just a stunt. Fortunately, a payload group at the California Institute of Technology's Jet Propulsion Lab (under the direction of Dr. William Pickering) had been working on a satellite design for several years. The 30-lb satellite, powered by an experimental mercury battery and built with some of the first transistors ever manufactured, would carry out several experiments once in orbit. <br />
<br />
Some of the more intricate experiments were designed by Dr. James Van Allen of the University of Iowa. Dr. Van Allen incorporated a cosmic ray counter and a geiger counter to track the elusive celestial energy particles that were rarely detectible at sea level. Due to the lack of space on the satellite, Dr. Van Allen omitted a data recorder, which eliminated continuous observations except when the satellite passed over a receiving station. The results from these observations were erratic and unexplained, until Dr. Van Allen made the remarkable discovery that massive magnetic bands emanating from the poles seemed to deflect most of the rays. The bands, now called the Van Allen Belts, are probably the greatest discovery of the early Space Age. The Belts reshaped our basic understanding of how Earth's magnetic field - - they're why life can continue on the planet without being destroyed by celestial radiation. <br />
<br />
All that previously unknown information became possible 55 years ago this evening, when von Braun's Juno booster hoisted Pickering's satellite with Van Allen's experiments into their first orbital mission. And we haven't stopped exploring since that evening. <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhL9uD1mhvoW0T23NoU3zZlYcMq1tEFPKksLaNa8tfK9dd0iI5ZjOh0ryfMgdEfiCPtzcC66Wu94u6m5xsI8VT1N_OeS1pUYz4uf65Iw863glZPZNqZnPrgvsAXnnK3AThOZGcgq4KBqis/s1600/vbexplorer1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhL9uD1mhvoW0T23NoU3zZlYcMq1tEFPKksLaNa8tfK9dd0iI5ZjOh0ryfMgdEfiCPtzcC66Wu94u6m5xsI8VT1N_OeS1pUYz4uf65Iw863glZPZNqZnPrgvsAXnnK3AThOZGcgq4KBqis/s640/vbexplorer1.jpg" height="640" width="504" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Pickering, Van Allen, and von Braun, hoisting a backup version of their Explorer I spacecraft<br />
at a press conference after their successful launch, Feb 1, 1958.</td></tr>
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<br />Jim O'Kanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01806624628546492210noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6952925068925494892.post-43893927535902116122012-12-05T20:17:00.001-08:002012-12-05T20:17:17.579-08:00Don't Crush that DwarfWhen I was a kid, comedy albums were all the rage. George Carlin, Richard Pryor, Steve Martin - - all the top stand-up comedians put out platinum-level blockbuster records that millions of teenagers bought at Sam Goody's and Tower Records stores. <br />
<br />
Improv and stand-up routines are clever and entertaining forms of comedy. I've been to comedy clubs and laughed at really witty, observational humor. The folks who can practice these crafts are great at what they do, and I don't think I'd be able to compete in their arena. Stand-up doesn't lend itself well to repeated listening, though. Once you've heard a routine, I don't think it's possible to recapture the same enjoyment level as when you first heard the jokes. <br />
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This is not true of my favorite form of comedy album: the scripted "radio show" style, or the immersive worlds pioneered by <b>The Firesign Theater</b>. The four actors of Firesign (Phil Proctor, Peter Bergman, Phil Austin, and David Ossman) created entire audio cities set in the past and future, where familiar characters bounded on stage, only to rebound again in later albums. The audio canvases deployed by The Firesign Theater were as seemingly real as watching "Lost" or "Star Trek," with buried background sounds noticed only on third or tenth replayings. The characters remain popular with many folks of my age and temperament: who doesn't cackle along with Rocky Rococo, as he taunts Nick Danger, Third Eye? Doesn't everyone follow the word "brough-ha-ha" with "ha ha ha?"<br />
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Although Firesign Theater (minus the late Peter Bergman, who passed away earlier this year) continues to produce new shows and recordings, I've missed the days of great radio show-style comedies. Garrison Keillor is a good storyteller, but his shows are mostly monologues, and miss a certain depth present in Firesign Theater tales.<br />
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Last month, I discovered a podcast show that I can't believe has evaded my notice for many years: <b>The Thrilling Adventure Hour</b>, hosted by <a href="http://nerdist.com/">Nerdist.com</a> and written by the team of Ben Acker and Ben Blacker. TAH is a cornucopia of well-written comedy sketches framed in the style of an old-time radio show. The cast is an amazing collection of current TV actors and pop culture icons, including such greats as Linda Cardinelli from<i> Freaks & Geeks</i> and <i>Firefly's</i> Nathan Fillion.<br />
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Although it's billed as an "Adventure Hour," the stage show is broken into half-hour "episodes" of varied storylines. Each episode tracks with longer story arcs for their groups of characters. They're all comedies, but in different genres. Here's a quick list of some of them:<br />
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<b>Captain Laserbeam</b>: A superhero show featuring the title character (voiced by John DiMaggio, Bender of <i>Futurama</i> fame), the protector of Apex City. With his enthusiastic gang of young Adventurekateers, Captain Laserbeam turns "wrong into right."<br />
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<b>Amelia Earhart, Fearless Flyer</b>: Whatever happened to Amelia Earhart? In 1938, she faked her disappearance at sea to serve the American Victory Commission as their one-woman, top secret Air Force. Autumn Reeser, who plays the plucky female submarine scientist Kylie on ABC's <i>The Last Resort</i> is the voice of Amelia.<br />
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<b>The Cross-Time Adventures of Colonel Tick-Tock</b>: Want a steampunk-era comedy? Sit back and enjoy the adventures of Colonel Tick-Tock, the chief of Her Royal Majesty Queen Victoria's Chrono Patrol. The Colonel makes sure History happens in the correct order. Craig Cackowski (Officer Cackowski on NBC's<i> Community</i>) is the title character.<br />
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<b>Beyond Belief</b>: A little bit of <i>Topper</i>, a whole lot of Nick & Nora Adams from <i>The Thin Man</i> series, it's the story of upper-crust couple Frank and Sadie Doyle, two love-besotted, and generally pickled ghostbusters living in a tony apartment atop the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan. The opening lines: "Who cares what Evil lurks in the hearts of men? Unless Evil is carrying the martini tray, darling!" sets the mood for cocktails and ghosts to follow.<br />
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<b>Sparks Nevada, Marshall on Mars</b>: The centerpiece of the entire TAH franchise,<i> Sparks Nevada, Marshall on Mars</i> is a cross between<i> Firefly</i>, <i>Gunsmoke</i>, <i>The Lone Ranger</i>, and<i> How I Met Your Mother</i>. As he repeatedly points out during every episode, Marshall Nevada (voiced by comedian Marc Evan Jackson) is from Earth, but he "rights the outlaw wrongs on Mars." His faithful (and blue) Martian companion is the onus-obsessed Croach the Tracker (voiced by <i>Drunk History</i>'s Mark Gagliardi), a being who doesn't understand human emotions and is quite reluctant to let anyone see his feet. Croach's tribe was saved by Sparks Nevada, and therefore he must remain a faithful companion for the Marshall in order for Croach to repay his tribe's onus.<br />
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The Marshall's friends are many: The Red Plains Rider, an Earth girl raised by Martians, who has a wandering crush on both Croach and Nevada; a saloonkeeper (voiced by Josh Malina of <i>The West Wing</i>) whose only goal is life is to have "no trouble" in his saloon; a rancher/deputy named Cactoid Jim (voiced by Nathan Fillion) whose legendary exploits are immortalized in song as they're occurring. There's also a building that's fallen in love with Croach, but it's a bit difficult to explain all the details about that romance in a few paragraphs.<br />
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The shows are miles deep in references, callbacks, and subtleties. Even the routines of each series play out differently each show. For example, Captain Laserbeam usually asks his Adventurekateers whether or not a previous villain has returned: "Is the Ancient Magician... up to his old tricks? Is Kid Kidnapper kidnapping kids for his devilish playgroup?" The gags are obvious, but their cleverness is refreshing.<br />
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Best thing about the show is that the podcasts are freely downloadable. There's almost 50 hours of episodes online, and they are consistently hilarious. Check them out at <a href="http://www.nerdist.com/podcast/thrilling-adventure-hour/" target="_blank">The Nerdist.com's podcast</a> home page.<br />
<br />Jim O'Kanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01806624628546492210noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6952925068925494892.post-65550253897322163402012-11-27T23:43:00.002-08:002012-11-28T07:59:12.569-08:00Pathei MathosI think the reason most people don't bother reading classical Greek literature is because it was all written thousands of years ago, and people probably think and act differently now than they did in those ancient stories. That's a mistaken idea about the past, though – – folks have always worried about their kids, listened to bad advice, made incredibly stupid decisions for the silliest of reasons, and suffered a lifetime of regrets.<br />
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Aesop is probably the best-known Greek writer to modern audiences. He's given us morals that spanned the gamut from "he who hesitates is lost," to "look before you leap." The take-away lessons we get from Aesop are as applicable now as they were in ancient Athens.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Aeschylus. Live 'n' Learn.</td></tr>
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Although not as well-known as Aesop, the Greek tragedian Aeschylus also understood how bumbling and shortsighted people could be. One of Aeschylus's greatest insights into human nature comes from his play <i>Agamemnon</i>. Aeschylus wrote:<br />
<br />
<i>"A man crying triumph for Zeus<br />will meet with wisdom totally —<br />Zeus who put men on wisdom the road,<br />who gave 'SUFFER and LEARN' authority.<br />Misery from pain remembered drips;<br />instead of sleep before the heart;<br />good sense comes even to the unwilling."</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<b>Suffer and learn</b> ("Pathei Mathos" in ancient Greek) - that seems to sum up all human knowledge. We stay on our toes and pay attention to new information when presented with agony, and the promise of more agony to come. November 28th is the anniversary of a night in Boston when many suffered, and many learned.<br />
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Not quite a year after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Boston in November of 1942 was a busy mix of military servicemen, civilian and civil service workers, and the usual crowd of collegiate students from the city's many universities. These varied groups shared a common interest on weekends: a chance to unwind and relax with friends in Boston's numerous bars and nightclubs.<br />
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One of the most popular destinations was the Cocoanut Grove nightclub, a sprawling collection of buildings centered around 17 Piedmont St., in the Bay Village section of Boston. Bay Village straddled the invisible line between the Back Bay and downtown Boston, attracting both the upper crust and the hoi polloi with live bands and a cheesy South Seas decor. The owner, Barney Welansky, supposedly had Mafia ties, lending an air of Prohibition-era intrigue to the goings-on, and making The Grove that much more enticing to the young crowd it attracted.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Floor plan of the Cocoanut Grove. Click for full-size.</td></tr>
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November 28, 1942 was the Saturday after Thanksgiving. The undefeated Boston College football team had scheduled a victory party at the Grove that night in anticipation of beating the rival Holy Cross team from Worcester, but after being trounced 55 – 12, Boston College canceled its reservation. Despite the cancellation, the crush of holiday partiers filled the Grove to more than 1000 people, in rooms rated for no more than 460 people. Customers shouldered past each other on narrow stairways, navigating between the downstairs Melody Lounge dance floor and the upstairs bar and ballroom. The place was packed like a box of matches.<br />
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16 year old busboy Stanley Tomaszewski was told to tighten a Christmas light-sized bulb in one of dim booths ringing the Melody Lounge dance floor. As Stanley grabbed the bulb, it slipped out of his hands and rolled under the table. Tomaszewski struck a match under the table, spotted the bulb, and retightened it in the light socket. As he did this, customers noticed a burst of flame leap up from beneath the table and ignite the crêpe paper and satin palm fronds draped across the walls and ceilings.<br />
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Nearby waiters grabbed empty champagne buckets and seltzer bottles and threw ice water on the decorations, but the fire outraced their feeble efforts. Flames licked up the stairwells, exploding into a fireball in the upstairs ballroom. In less than five minutes, every public room of the Grove had turned into a roiling inferno of smoke and flames.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">What the bar looked like after they cleared out the hundreds of dead bodies.</td></tr>
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Human nature being what it is, customers naturally headed to the only exit they knew: the revolving door entrance on the first floor where they had arrived. Unfortunately, the mad scramble for the same door simply filled the stairwells and corridors with the bodies of patrons who had become overcome by smoke inhalation. Bodies also clogged the single revolving door, making it not only impossible for customers to escape by that route, but also for rescuers to enter and render aid. Other escape routes had been blocked by the management: Barney Welansky had ordered the side doors locked so that customers couldn't skip out on their checks. The few exit doors that were not locked opened inwards, and were soon blocked by the crush of customers frantically trying to escape.<br />
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Two blocks away, firemen were dousing a car fire when they noticed smoke pouring out of the Cocoanut Grove. They were soon joined by 26 engine companies, three rescue companies, five ladder companies, and an eventual total of 187 firemen to fight the blaze.</div>
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The carnage was horrible. As officer Elmer Brooks later told the Boston Globe, when rescuers attempted to remove bodies stacked against the revolving doors, arms and legs came off in their hands. <br />
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Weather slowed the recovery efforts. After midnight, the temperature dropped to the mid-20s. Water froze on the cobblestone streets and fire hoses became difficult to bend. The sheer numbers of dead bodies stacked in the Grove made it difficult to attend to the living. The Motor Mart parking garage on nearby Charles St. was turned into a multistory makeshift morgue, where in the following days, survivors would come to try and identify their next of kin.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Almost half the losses of Pearl Harbor, all in just 15 minutes.</td></tr>
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Possibly one of the most fortunate aspects of the fire was that it took place during wartime. Local hospitals, expecting German air raids, were stocked with bandages, blood plasma, oxygen bottles, and saline solution. Additionally, a citywide air raid drill the week before prepared civil defense workers on how to handle large-scale catastrophes.<br />
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Despite the preparedness of the medical and fire teams, the death toll was staggering. The final number of deaths reached 492. As to the cause, there was more than enough blame to spread around. Flammable decorations passed inspection by the fire department just a week before the fire. The nightclub's lighting system had been installed by an unlicensed electrician. Locked fire doors and boarded up windows trapped hundreds in the burning building. Management packed the club with almost twice the legal capacity of the building. 400 lawsuits were filed against the owners of the Grove, yielding only about $150 for each of the survivors and their families. The only person to be convicted of a crime in the Grove fire was owner Barney Welansky, who was sentenced to 12 to 15 years in prison. Stricken with terminal cancer, he served only four years of the sentence. His only words to the press when he was released in 1946 were, "I wish I died with the others in that fire."<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Small miracles.</td></tr>
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What about Aeschylus's "suffer and learn" lesson? It turns out there were many lessons learned from the suffering. Both Massachusetts General Hospital and Boston City Hospital discovered new ways of treating burns and smoke inhalation. The new miracle antibiotic, penicillin, was found to be effective in preventing staph infections during this first use in a non-laboratory environment. Decreased staph infections also meant that pioneering skin graft operations would be more effective in saving lives. The use of a blood bank, Boston's first, aided in preventing shock due to loss of bodily fluids. New psychiatric treatments dealing with loss and grief were established in hospitals after the fire, becoming some of the first research into post-traumatic stress disorders.<br />
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It's been 70 years since the Cocoanut Grove fire, and little physical evidence remains of the catastrophe. The Motor Mart parking garage is still there, but not even the outline of the Grove buildings remain. A small plaque about a half block away from the site of the tragedy has been left as a memorial to those lost in the fire, but unless you're looking for it, it's difficult to notice. The more important reminders are nationwide changes in fire safety codes. Revolving doors can no longer be installed in buildings unless they are book-ended with outward opening fire doors. Exits must be clearly marked with separately powered, lighted signs. All fire doors must be unlocked during business hours.<br />
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The Boston licensing board also ruled that no restaurant in Boston could name itself "The Cocoanut Grove."<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNAf6P_X78VFNYyOthRW3XXsgE-4MddkQtKTwgJ9LHEkV6rK5oZJxCW2cSWiHuUEDExG8B7Qx5ePNmuxtnaujW96UdAZ9_9-1fN9d3wxPjZwnhbkBN5z2wBT71otKs6u9tSX0CGwDMEac/s1600/cgexterior.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="516" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNAf6P_X78VFNYyOthRW3XXsgE-4MddkQtKTwgJ9LHEkV6rK5oZJxCW2cSWiHuUEDExG8B7Qx5ePNmuxtnaujW96UdAZ9_9-1fN9d3wxPjZwnhbkBN5z2wBT71otKs6u9tSX0CGwDMEac/s640/cgexterior.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Not just an empty lot: the streets were moved and that particular area is now buried under a Radisson Hotel.</td></tr>
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<br />Jim O'Kanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01806624628546492210noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6952925068925494892.post-65552051912954343452012-11-16T22:36:00.002-08:002012-11-16T22:49:57.206-08:00Those Magnificent MenThere's a first time for everything, and unfortunately, that includes the first time someone dies doing something new. November 17th is the anniversary of one of those sad pioneering moments.<br />
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After building and flying their first heavier-than-air vehicle in 1903, Orville and Wilbur Wright found themselves in a logistics pickle. In order to build more aircraft, they'd need to sell aircraft so they would have capital to construct new planes. Unlike their bicycle-buying customers in Ohio, new aircraft customers probably had never seen a demonstration of the product the Wrights were trying to market. Since Orville and Wilbur were the only people on the planet who knew how to pilot a Wright Flyer, it was difficult, if not impossible, for the brothers to give demonstration flights across the country while trying to manufacture new aircraft.<br />
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The obvious solution was to establish an aircraft flying school, where novice pilots could learn the rudiments of operating Wright biplanes and take these new-found skills on the road, or rather, to the air. So, on March 19, 1910, Orville Wright set up an aviation camp along the banks of the Alabama River in Montgomery, Alabama. His first order of business for the school was to train 10 newly hired employees who would act as a flying exhibition team across the country.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Orville Wright (3rd from right, in pitched-back straw hat)<br />
conducting a class at the Wright Aviation School in Montgomery.</td></tr>
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Two of the employees at the Montgomery flight school were naturals for the aerial exhibition field. Archibald Hoxsey, a 26-year-old mechanic from central Illinois, impressed the Wright brothers so much that he was assigned a teaching job when the school opened. Hoxsey understood the nature of aircraft piloting so well, he became the first person to fly an aircraft at night. Ralph Johnstone, a 30-year-old former vaudeville trick bicycle rider, was a quick learner, too, and had a knack for acrobatic maneuvers.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBu4-GZPX7Jv8JG5x4AWs319lJ7efnakCy6-jerwfOWbbfVi5PndJh3NqU8UEAj6To1KqbtKSM9hKnrQc618SAWxyt559KNUNuIfysJ9VOLIUSFDcK2HP-B_CJiLiWQ7bsJLLz3F0_wRo/s1600/trhoxley.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="315" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBu4-GZPX7Jv8JG5x4AWs319lJ7efnakCy6-jerwfOWbbfVi5PndJh3NqU8UEAj6To1KqbtKSM9hKnrQc618SAWxyt559KNUNuIfysJ9VOLIUSFDcK2HP-B_CJiLiWQ7bsJLLz3F0_wRo/s400/trhoxley.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Wright Exhibition Team Member Arch Hoxsey (right) explains <br />
aeronautics to a Mr. Theodore Roosevelt in St. Louis, Oct 11, 1910.</td></tr>
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The 10 Wright employees became instant celebrities as they toured the country in their new Wright flyers. Hundreds, even thousands of spectators would jam state fairgrounds and horse race tracks to watch the daring aviators take off, soar, swoop, dive, and land. Aviation skeptics would be converted by just a glimpse of Johnstone and Hoxsey tracing figure eights in the sky. Wright pilots crisscrossed the country, turning the fanciful idea of flying men into a vivid, undeniable reality.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ralph Johnstone in a Wright Flyer, demonstrating aerial reality to the crowds.</td></tr>
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The true nature of flight became a bit too real on November 17, 1910 in Denver, Colorado. At the Overland Park golf course and aviation field, Johnstone, Hoxsey, and another Wright pilot named Brookings put on yet another typical airshow for hundreds of spectators in the airfield grandstands. After a few laps and low level passes, Hoxsey and Brookings landed, leaving Johnstone alone in the sky. Johnson began a slow spiral turn to gain altitude so that he could perform a crowd pleasing favorite: a narrow spiral dive.<br />
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Johnstone was at an altitude of only 300 feet when he began his spiral dive. With the plane tilted almost perpendicular to the ground, he swooped into a narrow circle smaller than the length of his own aircraft. Witnesses on the ground later reported that as Johnstone finished the second complete spin of his plane, one of the wing spars on the left side of the aircraft fell away, causing the upper and lower wings to fold up like a lawn chair. Ralph tried to correct by warping the right side of the wing with his foot pedal, but without any remaining aerodynamic surfaces on the port side of the aircraft, he was no longer in control of the ship. Johnstone was tossed out of his seat as the plane spiraled toward the ground, and was caught in the wire stays bracing the center part of the wing. He reached frantically toward the upper wing, trying to work it with his bare hands to regain control of the aircraft. Johnstone's actions only succeeded in causing the plane to flip upside down. Ralph slammed into the earth at an estimated 60 mph, run almost completely through by a shattered vertical strut.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZMH-TUXVKKlX4kDyr3BQ6JRIg8T4ZAtEjfLuKlR8Zs9-Qw_be9hUXA6T6nfwaWac9Fs7EI32Ylwoz54AK7-xVt0fGdDjTsDF_yiZkxUhwBOUEXt9raWQ9nejiwuZ9Nt4Zpf6oZxJaHuo/s1600/johnstonenews.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZMH-TUXVKKlX4kDyr3BQ6JRIg8T4ZAtEjfLuKlR8Zs9-Qw_be9hUXA6T6nfwaWac9Fs7EI32Ylwoz54AK7-xVt0fGdDjTsDF_yiZkxUhwBOUEXt9raWQ9nejiwuZ9Nt4Zpf6oZxJaHuo/s400/johnstonenews.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">All dressed up in potential souvenirs</td></tr>
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It was difficult for police investigators and Wright engineers to piece together the cause of Johnstone's crash. Not much was left of the aircraft, not due to the crash, but due to a descending swarm of souvenir-hungry spectators, who raced from the grandstands in order to scoop up Johnstone's personal effects from the just wrecked plane. Even Johnstone's gloves had been swiped from his body by the ghoulish audience. Hoxsey and Brookings had to fight their way through the crowd to retrieve Johnstone's body, which they loaded into an automobile.<br />
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Newspapers across the country had a field day with their editorial postmortems. The San Francisco Call speculated that although Johnstone had promised there would be no stunts that day, several daring maneuvers by Hoxsey earlier in the show spurred Ralph toward more riskier acrobatics. Another theory stated that Johnstone may have been affected by the bitter cold, making it difficult to grip the control services on such a bitterly frigid day. Weeks after the accident Orville Wright concluded that Johnson lost control because he was unable to stay in his seat. Unlike today, aircraft seats were not equipped with safety belts.<br />
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Johnstone would not be the only pilot to die in service to the Wright brothers. Archibald Hoxsey, after setting a flight altitude record of 11,474 feet on December 30, 1910, would crash his plane the following day in Los Angeles trying to beat his own record. The guilt stricken Wright brothers paid for Hoxsey's funeral. Orville and Wilbur disbanded the Wright exhibition team the following year.<br />
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Apart from his gravestone in Independence, Missouri, Ralph Johnstone doesn't seem to have any memorials erected in his name. I guess there are some firsts that people would rather not remember. RIP, Ralph.<br />
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<br />Jim O'Kanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01806624628546492210noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6952925068925494892.post-91824249047292338452012-11-13T21:48:00.004-08:002013-01-12T07:50:37.580-08:00We had Everything in the World Drop OutHere's a sad thought: as of 2010, more than half the country was not yet alive when America landed on the Moon. Folks my age, the people who witnessed the Apollo missions, are the exception, not the rule.<br />
<br />
As such, the Apollo missions are a matter of remote history, consigned
in popular culture to the same ranks of historic ignorance as the War of
1812 or the life of William H Taft.<br />
<b> </b><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2cFKr9FoubDF1fajA8uvyP8fKMZQkADkO7lrdo1bHI2E5eeBpMWep5gsyobqxrj5tBciv4nUgtkjkQ0Y5dWGwSbBOitYroOxcfNQKQVK4CBjoFx8YnSQ-4S7dyVnD2yXag5xhx8_O_S4/s1600/apollo13hanks.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="217" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2cFKr9FoubDF1fajA8uvyP8fKMZQkADkO7lrdo1bHI2E5eeBpMWep5gsyobqxrj5tBciv4nUgtkjkQ0Y5dWGwSbBOitYroOxcfNQKQVK4CBjoFx8YnSQ-4S7dyVnD2yXag5xhx8_O_S4/s320/apollo13hanks.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Historical trivia: Tom Hanks didn't go to the Moon<br />
with Kevin Bacon and Bill Paxton. </td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXQCkfQ0IgjbK8YBVLN89OV-7LnZ7VRIufwjALfrZeE6o3OuB_EbcT3dwQWPNT1BW47yNn129vSPkt1ZNLKz2WUNh2EyIDl5wuQODjiO_0p411IzEhZI8hLhGKpc7-vgsmfot2bdggYJQ/s1600/surveyor3trench.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXQCkfQ0IgjbK8YBVLN89OV-7LnZ7VRIufwjALfrZeE6o3OuB_EbcT3dwQWPNT1BW47yNn129vSPkt1ZNLKz2WUNh2EyIDl5wuQODjiO_0p411IzEhZI8hLhGKpc7-vgsmfot2bdggYJQ/s320/surveyor3trench.jpg" width="317" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Surveyor 3 was the first spacecraft to <br />
purposefully dig a trench on the Moon.<br />
That doesn't include all the spacecraft that accidentally<br />
dug a trench on impact.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Most people have a poor understanding of the history of Apollo. Their limited knowledge is derived almost exclusively from motion pictures such as Ron Howard's <i>Apollo 13</i>, a movie that, while accurate in most details, left behind a general idea that the only Bad Thing that ever happened on the way to the Moon was the Apollo 13 mission. The movie also gave the impression that Apollo astronauts were merely helpless passengers on a deep space journey, constantly hoping and praying that ground crews would come up with ideas to rescue them.<br />
<br />
In fact, NASA's astronauts were not only veteran test pilots, but skilled aeronautical engineers, capable of diagnosing complex electrical systems and flight navigation software. The mission immediately prior to Apollo 13 put these myriad skills to the test in a life or death situation, just moments after launch. And the entire near cataclysm was witnessed by no less an audience than the President of the United States, 43 years ago on November 14, 1969.<br />
<br />
The Apollo 12 mission was designed to be the first manned lunar landing with a precise target destination in mind. Unlike Armstrong and Aldrin's goal of merely landing on the flattest part of the Moon, astronauts Pete Conrad and Alan Bean would aim for a 300 square yard touchdown zone near the landing site of the unmanned Surveyor 3 spacecraft. The mission would test the limits of the crew's navigating and piloting skills, as well as the hardware's computing and event handling abilities.<br />
<br />
Cmdr. Pete Conrad was arguably the best choice to lead this mission. The veteran naval aviator and test pilot had previously crewed the long-duration Gemini 5 mission, as well as the Gemini 11 Agena docking mission, a flight that briefly made Conrad and copilot Richard Gordon record holders for having traveled farthest from planet Earth. Conrad was a comedian and a prankster, but he also had a reputation for keeping a cool head and working through problems, even during the most dire emergencies. He was reliable when situations were no longer "nominal."<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgz21QKDL2h2QsyEztn6kyYlm8Xg0vlgmZFBLJwR4EGEI_47dqAvZutpGCZFye_rRc7Y7nlPhjp3e6RJiCDncVsGH9XBAeePX5u6oqOayE3C3OLyJHAldiKsTh2W-wBORvWI6iTLIgeoLk/s1600/apollo12nixon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgz21QKDL2h2QsyEztn6kyYlm8Xg0vlgmZFBLJwR4EGEI_47dqAvZutpGCZFye_rRc7Y7nlPhjp3e6RJiCDncVsGH9XBAeePX5u6oqOayE3C3OLyJHAldiKsTh2W-wBORvWI6iTLIgeoLk/s320/apollo12nixon.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Don't disappoint the President.</td></tr>
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Launch weather on the morning of Apollo 12's scheduled liftoff was hardly nominal. An advancing front had pushed a low cloud deck over Merritt Island during the evening, and set visibility conditions at the brink of flight rule acceptability. Unfortunately for NASA, politics sometimes trumped caution. President Richard Nixon, Chief Executive of the United States and holder of the Pen of Budget Appropriations Approval was in town for the launch that day, and to disappoint someone who was in charge of deciding the future of the agency would be an unwise move. So, despite the dodgy weather, the all-Navy crew was loaded into the 365-ft tall Saturn V and the countdown continued in the rain. <br />
<br />
At T-0:00, with 7.5 million pounds of thrust, Apollo 12 thundered off the launch pad into the clouds. Just thirty seconds later, the ship would go transonic, pushing through maximum aerodynamic pressure inside the storm.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Launch commit... liftoff!</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Thirty six and one half seconds into the flight, the Something Bad part happened. Here's a transcript:<br />
<br />
<span style="color: maroon;"><b>000:00:37 Gordon (onboard):</b> What the hell was that?</span><br />
<span style="color: maroon;"><b>000:00:38 Conrad (onboard):</b> Huh?</span><br />
<span style="color: maroon;">
<b>000:00:39 Gordon (onboard):</b> I lost a whole bunch of stuff; I don't know. </span><br />
<br />
What happened was that a bolt of lightning seared through the clouds and the spacecraft, riding the trail of rocket vapor back to the launch pad. A second bolt of lightning repeated the journey a few seconds later.<br />
<br />
<span style="color: maroon;">
<b>000:00:50 Gordon (onboard):</b> I can't see; there's something wrong. </span><br />
<span style="color: maroon;">
<b>000:00:51 Conrad (onboard):</b> AC Bus 1 light, all the fuel cells-</span><br />
<span style="color: maroon;">
<b>000:00:56 Conrad (onboard):</b> I just lost the platform.</span> <br />
<br />
Conrad was looking at a mess on his control panel. Every possible alarm signal was lit. The entire electrical system, previously being powered by fuel cells in the Apollo Service Module, seemed to be out. The navigation system (the pilots' familiar 8-ball) was spinning endlessly in a useless gimbal lock. And still the ship hadn't exploded... yet. Either the alarms were wrong or they were about to experience the first out-of-control Moonship. Conrad briefly explained the situation to Mission Control.<br />
<br />
<span style="color: #990000;"><b>000:01:02 Conrad:</b> Okay, we just lost the platform, gang. I don't know what happened here; we had everything in the world drop out. </span><br />
<br />
Gordon, the Command Module Pilot, didn't think it was a hardware problem, but he wasn't sure what to do about the instrumentation problem.<br />
<br />
<span style="color: maroon;"><b>000:01:09 Gordon (onboard):</b> I can't - There's nothing I can tell is wrong, Pete.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #990000;"><b>000:01:12 Conrad:</b> I got three fuel cell lights, an AC bus light, a fuel cell disconnect, AC bus overload 1 and 2, Main Bus A and B out.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #990000;"><span style="color: black;">This was no way to get to the Moon. Apollo 12 hadn't reached orbit yet - - they still were low enough to use their Launch Escape Tower and abort the mission. Conrad fingered the abort handle on the arm of his chair and pondered options.</span></span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2jcbI1BekBDpvcgipa8czJRhdoxjaQi_UMND4Y6WbdfkYGqbA_ioJzWZkqTaGueM873bSS1LiiKybbxFy2BqlBVf7CPZyIHYhB_oC3_J3_L4rK1vw7a29-Jt6REBbSIs4T7YB8SG3Kdo/s1600/apollo12cm.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2jcbI1BekBDpvcgipa8czJRhdoxjaQi_UMND4Y6WbdfkYGqbA_ioJzWZkqTaGueM873bSS1LiiKybbxFy2BqlBVf7CPZyIHYhB_oC3_J3_L4rK1vw7a29-Jt6REBbSIs4T7YB8SG3Kdo/s400/apollo12cm.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Artist - astronaut Al Bean's interpretation of that moment.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="color: #990000;"><span style="color: black;"> In the right-hand seat, Lunar Module Pilot Al Bean noodled through the dials on his side of the ship. Bean spotted a voltage indicator from the fuel cells that showed there was still energy in the system. </span> </span><br />
<span style="color: maroon;"><b>000:01:21 Bean (onboard):</b> I got AC.</span><br />
<span style="color: maroon;">
<b>000:01:22 Conrad (onboard):</b> We got AC?</span><br />
<span style="color: maroon;">
<b>000:01:23 Bean (onboard):</b> Yes.</span><br />
<span style="color: maroon;">
<b>000:01:24 Conrad (onboard):</b> Maybe it's just the indicator. What do you got on the main bus?</span><br />
<span style="color: maroon;">
<b>000:01:26 Bean (onboard):</b> Main bus is - The volt indicated is 24 volts.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: maroon;"><span style="color: black;">Twenty four volts wasn't enough to run the mission, but it also meant that the electricity might be shorting out somewhere in the panel or in one of the circuits. The question was how to isolate the electrical problem without detonating the tons of fuel just behind them that was in the process of shoving them toward the Moon.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: maroon;"><span style="color: black;"> </span> </span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTOk7it5I_y5ItXSqOhN8ZrBkct_4-TkGSyWUuFsK4fIs4LwduwyyhBpWnghjvu9rc1bhHAqZCH6fXtH5T0ohMPc6ns4LWoULpHzjm91_GhKkovltRynNiqe7Nj4_KSOmDOqEmje1vM2U/s1600/johnaaron.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="262" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTOk7it5I_y5ItXSqOhN8ZrBkct_4-TkGSyWUuFsK4fIs4LwduwyyhBpWnghjvu9rc1bhHAqZCH6fXtH5T0ohMPc6ns4LWoULpHzjm91_GhKkovltRynNiqe7Nj4_KSOmDOqEmje1vM2U/s400/johnaaron.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">EECOM and veteran chain smoker John Aaron.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="color: maroon;"><span style="color: black;">In Houston, a NASA physics major named John Aaron suddenly realized this scenario was somewhat familiar. Aaron was the </span></span><span style="color: maroon;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="st">Electrical, Environmental and Consumables Manager (EECOM) for this flight, and he had seen a launch problem like this during a mission simulation back in 1968. The problem was that the primary equipment used to convert hardware electrical loads to power levels that could be read by the monitoring dials (known as "signal conditioning equipment") was broken. Fortunately, Apollo was equipped with backup, auxiliary equipment. Aaron knew the problems with all the different system alarms could be fixed with the flick of a switch. Aaron keyed his microphone to talk to CAPCOM Gerry Carr. "Try SCE to AUX," he said.<br /><br />Astronaut CAPCOM Gerry Carr had no idea what that sentence meant. Neither did Flight Director Gerry Griffith, serving as Flight Director on his very first mission. "Tell them that," he told Carr.</span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: maroon;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="st"></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #990000;"><b>000:01:36 Carr:</b> Apollo 12, Houston. Try SCE to auxiliary. Over.</span><br />
<span style="color: #990000;"><b>000:01:39 Conrad:</b> Try FCE to Auxiliary. What the hell is that?</span><br />
<span style="color: #990000;"><b>000:01:41 Conrad:</b> NCE to auxiliary...</span><br />
<span style="color: maroon;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: maroon;"><span style="color: black;">Carr corrected Conrad:</span></span><br />
<span style="color: maroon;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #990000;"><b>000:01:43 Carr:</b> <u>S</u>CE, <u>S</u>CE to auxiliary.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #990000;"><span style="color: black;">Conrad also never heard that command before this mission. Fortunately, Al Bean knew what they were talking about. Bean had been part of the same simulation run that John Aaron remembered, and knew where the switch was on the many confusing panels of the Command Module. Al turned the switch, and the control panel reset itself. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: maroon;">
<b>000:01:48 Bean (onboard):</b> It looks - Everything looks good.</span><br />
<span style="color: maroon;">
<b>000:01:50 Conrad (onboard):</b> SCE to Aux.</span><br />
<span style="color: maroon;">
<b>000:01:52 Gordon (onboard):</b> The GDC is good.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: maroon;"><span style="color: black;">Guidance and telemetry were back online, or rather, the astronauts were now able to see what Guidance and telemetry was trying to tell them. Conrad didn't have to pull the abort handle and stop the mission. Immediate crisis averted, they finally had time to take in what had just happened:</span></span><br />
<span style="color: maroon;"><b>000:06:43 Gordon (onboard):</b> Man, oh man ...</span><br />
<span style="color: maroon;">
<b>000:06:44 Bean (onboard):</b> Isn't that a ...</span><br />
<span style="color: maroon;">
<b>000:06:45 Conrad (onboard):</b> Wasn't that a Sim[ulation] they ever gave us?</span><br />
<span style="color: maroon;">
<b>000:06:46 Gordon (onboard):</b> Jesus!</span><br />
<span style="color: maroon;">
<b>000:06:50 Conrad (onboard):</b> [Laughter].</span><br />
<span style="color: maroon;">
<b>000:06:51 Gordon (onboard):</b> That was something else. I never saw so many...</span><br />
<span style="color: maroon;">
<b>000:06:52 Conrad (onboard):</b> [Laughter].</span><br />
<span style="color: maroon;">
<b>000:06:54 Gordon (onboard):</b> ...There were so many lights up there, I couldn't
even read them all.</span><br />
<span style="color: maroon;">
<b>000:06:55 Conrad (onboard):</b> [Laughter].</span><br />
<span style="color: maroon;">
<b>000:06:57 Gordon (onboard):</b> There was no sense reading them because there was - I was - I was looking at this; Al was looking over there ...</span><br />
<span style="color: maroon;">
<b>000:07:02 Conrad (onboard):</b> Everything looked great [laughter] except we had all the lights on...</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYbKIEMpmWbasTuQeBxwdILfJcmx438LikHE8cEa-2lRdOp-IuaqZjRredmKmj0l4zrQ2BqZtBSP1j9V0Gpoa81AbEjCfkQLXgVzzNMZn7Z76-MIT5tHQT_fBd9E6RPmsTX6AKCjj4X8c/s1600/apollo12lightning.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="282" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYbKIEMpmWbasTuQeBxwdILfJcmx438LikHE8cEa-2lRdOp-IuaqZjRredmKmj0l4zrQ2BqZtBSP1j9V0Gpoa81AbEjCfkQLXgVzzNMZn7Z76-MIT5tHQT_fBd9E6RPmsTX6AKCjj4X8c/s400/apollo12lightning.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">High-speed launchpad cameras revealed the twin lightning strikes<br />
that nearly wrecked the mission. </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<span style="color: maroon;"><span style="color: black;">An amazing, terrifying moment that could have easily ended in failure, or tragedy. Instead, the training and skill of the crew and support staff managed to avert disaster. Oh, and they did manage to land right next to that Surveyor spacecraft just five days later.</span></span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioEoCsS3TecKN0n5k6SjplaoxcPpu8IM9UooqkUWShY0IHp2C2iKMVQZnAm0X7wme4CE8sNgQuQqfgCA0t-PlQ-hE0qXnC-5sN4Ijd_vxVHJ7cLPy6vJgy9ScarOFncZehO2irdSrrsq8/s1600/surveyor3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioEoCsS3TecKN0n5k6SjplaoxcPpu8IM9UooqkUWShY0IHp2C2iKMVQZnAm0X7wme4CE8sNgQuQqfgCA0t-PlQ-hE0qXnC-5sN4Ijd_vxVHJ7cLPy6vJgy9ScarOFncZehO2irdSrrsq8/s400/surveyor3.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mission Accomplished</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgr0ykmOjx7PqiNNkoR_q0cyj8gZPAmB9dBrVzWqDnSs1ukYuZ6kwhYUHnzjaUW9zmrQWIhfjMsD_j-_4-br9CSVu8WTnyACIieRT-VJ1rbdlBxBLzl8LdlEEgy3U018ysY5u6FXzALUFc/s1600/gerrycarr.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgr0ykmOjx7PqiNNkoR_q0cyj8gZPAmB9dBrVzWqDnSs1ukYuZ6kwhYUHnzjaUW9zmrQWIhfjMsD_j-_4-br9CSVu8WTnyACIieRT-VJ1rbdlBxBLzl8LdlEEgy3U018ysY5u6FXzALUFc/s400/gerrycarr.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Me and Captain Girlfriend with <br />
CAPCOM Gerry Carr, who later flew on Skylab 4</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/ySXVQmIStXc?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
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<span style="color: maroon;"><span style="color: black;"> </span> </span>Jim O'Kanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01806624628546492210noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6952925068925494892.post-13458897193166017562012-11-11T15:24:00.000-08:002012-11-12T09:25:12.356-08:00Percival Lowell and the Blood Vessels of Venus<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiY_md1r3vlbq9g9M1-78R-fd4Id7oRY9gpcow7yPgsvDu6C-LhI5XPai5fSxuFsafhdHonZTqrAhxjYgKSima35E89vgD0OdlCPhuCKZZkIDCngRPnSf-57c4OanAdHmgt9SoA2hSbbU/s1600/Lowell.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="317" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiY_md1r3vlbq9g9M1-78R-fd4Id7oRY9gpcow7yPgsvDu6C-LhI5XPai5fSxuFsafhdHonZTqrAhxjYgKSima35E89vgD0OdlCPhuCKZZkIDCngRPnSf-57c4OanAdHmgt9SoA2hSbbU/s400/Lowell.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Percival Lowell, shown during the middle of the <br />
longest unwitting eye exam in history</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Astronomer Percival Lowell died 96 years ago on November 12, 1916. Everything I've ever read about him lauds his enormous contributions to the field of astronomy, but I'm really not quite sure what those contributions were.<br />
<br />
Lowell was a rich guy, descended from a family of rich guys who arrived in Massachusetts about 15 years behind the <i>Mayflower</i>. Let me just give you an idea of how rich the Lowell family was: Percival's brother Lawrence was the president of Harvard University, and his sister Amy had enough free time to become a<i> professional poet</i>.<br />
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Percival graduated Harvard University in 1876, with a degree in mathematics. For ten years, he traveled the Orient writing and publishing three books about the history, psychology, and culture of Japan. By 1893 he had grown bored of travel, and turned his interests to planetary astronomy.<br />
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Planetary astronomy was all the rage in the 1890s, especially terrestrial planets like Venus and Mars. Lowell was especially taken by the writings of the Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli, who believed he viewed lines of channels or canals on Mars. Lowell believed in these canals as well, and built an observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona to confirm these sightings. <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lowell's Martian canals, 1896.</td></tr>
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Percival Lowell cranked out three books about Mars, each volume loaded with dozens of sketches of the elaborate Mars canal system. He interpreted the canals as a last gasp construction of the dying Mars race, built to move dwindling water supplies from the polar ice caps to the parched equatorial regions. The whole idea seems maudlin and melodramatic, but after all, this was the Victorian age.<br />
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Lowell's observations of extraterrestrial canals weren't limited to the planet Mars. He also spotted a hub and spoke system constructed on the surface of Venus. Unlike Schiaparelli's Martian canals, Lowell was the only astronomer to note such features on Venus. In fact, Lowell only spotted these features when he narrowed the objective lens of his telescope to a mere half millimeter in front of his eye.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Not astronomy - - it's anatomy.</td></tr>
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In 2003, retired optometrist Sherman Schultz figured out what Percival Lowell was actually seeing: the objective lens was reflecting shadows of blood vessels inside Lowell's eye. The map of Venus was in reality a map of the back of Percival Lowell's eyeball. It's quite likely that the canals of Mars were also a side effect of Percival Lowell's optical blood vessels. In any case, <i>Mariner 4 </i>eliminated the question of canals on Mars during its flyby of the Red Planet in 1965.<br />
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So, if Lowell's observation of canals on Mars was a bust, and the structures on Venus were a delusion, did he make <i>any</i> contribution in the field of planetary astronomy? An argument could be made that he helped in the discovery of the dwarf planet Pluto – – except, even in that adventure he was horribly mistaken on a planetary scale. Lowell, the mathematician, found a glaring gap in the gravity equations governing the motions of planets Uranus and Neptune. To account for the discrepancy, it seemed as though there was a third, more distant planet tugging on Neptune. This mysterious "Planet X" was Lowell's focus in the final decade of his life. Hundreds of photographic plates were made at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, searching for a tiny dot in the sky to resolve the equation. The search continued long after Lowell had passed away, ending finally with the discovery by Clyde Tombaugh of the dwarf planet Pluto in 1930. Revisiting earlier photography, Tombaugh noted that Pluto had been imaged previously during Lowell's lifetime in 1916, but the tiny speck of Pluto had been overlooked.<br />
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It turns out that the entire search for Pluto had been a mathematical mistake in the first place. Spacecraft <i>Voyager 2</i> confirmed that the planet Neptune was much less massive than Lowell had estimated, making the search for an additional planet unnecessary. Although the data was erroneous, Lowell's mistake set in motion the process of discovery that allowed Tombaugh to find Pluto.<br />
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Percival wasn't the only person in the Lowell household to see things that weren't there. His wife, Constance Lowell, was sued by a neighbor for "false arrest and malicious prosecution" after she claimed the neighbor had stolen twelve chickens (and a chicken coop). The neighbor was acquitted, and I can't find a record of how the civil suit turned out.<br />
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Even though Lowell's astronomical work didn't do much to advance the
science of astronomy his romantic notions of Martian canals gave birth
to the science fiction stories of H.G. Wells and Ray Bradbury. Bad
astronomy makes for great science fiction.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lowell's tomb is in the shape of an observatory.<br />
John Carter would approve.</td></tr>
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<br />Jim O'Kanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01806624628546492210noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6952925068925494892.post-26931278809158828242012-11-09T18:19:00.002-08:002012-11-15T07:34:20.368-08:00I Saw the Flags of Havoc FlyI seem to write a lot about Bad Things in History when approaching an anniversary of a Bad Thing, so let's talk about a Really Bad Thing that happened in Boston on November 9th, 1872. <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The green part is Boston, 1772.<br />
The extra lines are filled-in Boston, 1880.</td></tr>
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Most of Boston's geography is manufactured. Back in John Adams's time, the city (actually it was called the <i>Town</i> of Boston then) was a spit of land straddling two bays - - a peninsula (the Shawmut Peninsula) isolated by a salty tidal moat. To satisfy the loud demand for additional real estate, the town fathers shaved off the tops of Mount Vernon, Pemberton, and Beacon Hills and pushed all the gravel and soil into the harbor. The rearrangement of the hillsides created what's now Haymarket Square and the Atlantic Avenue harbor area.<br />
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Despite all these experiments with manufactured real estate, building space remained at a premium. Stores and houses were pressed cheek-by-jowl in the downtown area, with buildings four and five floors tall cropping up in the densest part of town - the area closest to Atlantic Avenue. By the mid-1800's, real estate developers crammed almost three thousand new structures into the teeming city, using slap-dash methods to build the cheapest buildings as quickly as possible. Although the city government passed dozens of building codes to prevent fire and pestilence, there was no municipal inspection agency created to enforce such laws.<br />
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Adding to the city's woes, Boston's entire infrastructure was rapidly outstripped by the increasing demands for city services. A puny water distribution network, poor sewers, and understaffed volunteer fire departments made the city a health and safety time bomb. Fixes were haphazard, mostly band-aid solutions to solve immediate problems rather than implementing a structural redesign. Boston's Fire Chief, John Damrell, fought for new water mains in the densest part of the city, but was rebuffed by politicians seeking more vote-catching ways of spending city funds. <br />
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Arson was a huge problem. Insurance underwriting was in its infancy, and failing businesses could easily over-insure their properties, burn their edifices to the ground, and collect a hefty return on the ashes. <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">83-87 Summer St, where the fire began.<br />
Note the steep, fire-friendly Mansard roof. </td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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All these splintered, systemic troubles set the stage for the disaster that began on night of November 9th, 1872. Just after 7:20pm, a fire ignited in the basement of a warehouse at 83-87 Summer St. Within minutes, the flames engulfed the building and spread to nearby stores and warehouses. The fire spread across downtown rooftops due to an unfortunate combination of architecture and taxation: first, the roofs were tall wooden Mansard-style structures that acted as giant flues, lifting necessary oxygen into the flames; and second, the attics of these commercial buildings were filled with crates of hoop skirts, top hats, gloves, and linens, owing to a tax loophole where store inventories kept in attics were not taxed by the city. The necessary ingredients of heat, fuel, and oxygen made for a rapid spread of the flames through the middle of Boston's commercial district.<br />
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Other combinations of poor planning and simple bad luck made the fire uncontainable. A bout of horse flu crippled the draft livery of Boston's fire departments. Steam pump wagons were hauled through the cobblestone streets by teams of firemen, delaying any start to fighting the fire by almost an hour after the first alarm. The first alarms, by the way, were already delayed because the Boston Fire Department padlocked public fire alarms to prevent prank calls by the locals.<br />
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When the pumps were attached to the hydrants, a new difficulty arose: the ancient water mains were too narrow to provide enough water for the pumps to reach the upper floors of the downtown buildings. Although crews could soak the lower floors, the fires continued to spread through downtown Boston all evening.<br />
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Spectators clogged the streets as the fire continued to spread, blocking the efforts of the Boston firefighters. Reinforcements of firemen and equipment arrived by train throughout the night from as far away as Maine and Vermont. Unfortunately, the trains brought out-of-town spectators, too, which turned the blazing scene into an epic panorama of firefighting and looting. The out-of-state firemen discovered to their dismay that Boston's haphazard installation of hydrants made it almost impossible to find hoses that were compatible with the hydrant couplings. Connecticut pump units were parked along the harborside, unable to draw any water from Boston's mains.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVifVbw7UOmrd1jZv1cdylXEiiCgzCsQc8VrMf0v7e4pQsZ3SH_Du0Jw77tWMIR3_lppkhgfRobFf-r6Y9xS4B0vOflU4O6LQtvVqe83t-rrnWefBjbr7C5E6u08bnxjV-gVV4vpqJvMU/s1600/afterfire.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVifVbw7UOmrd1jZv1cdylXEiiCgzCsQc8VrMf0v7e4pQsZ3SH_Du0Jw77tWMIR3_lppkhgfRobFf-r6Y9xS4B0vOflU4O6LQtvVqe83t-rrnWefBjbr7C5E6u08bnxjV-gVV4vpqJvMU/s320/afterfire.jpg" width="234" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">1872 Boston looked like<br />
1865 Richmond.</td></tr>
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With the fire still beyond control of the Fire Department, residents petitioned the Mayor to take a gamble on stopping the fire with drastic measures: namely, blowing up a line of buildings on Washington St. to act as a firewall against the rest of the city. Both the mayor and the Fire Chief objected to this course of action, suggesting that the demolitions would do little to stop the fire. Building owners tried the gunpowder approach anyway, with mixed results. Some buildings exploded to splinters and brick dust, others merely lost a few windows. Ultimately, the demolition of the buildings played no part in stopping the fire.<br />
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By the time the fire was contain the next morning, more than 65 acres of prime downtown Boston real estate had been destroyed. Seven hundred seventy six buildings were no more. The fire caused an estimated $75 million (in 1872 dollars) in loss and damages. <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Thirty dead, 776 buildings gone.</td></tr>
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Fire Chief Damrell, despite his campaign for better fire prevention policies, lost his job and was replaced by a Board of Fire Commissioners. In an ironic twist, Damrell was appointed head of the new Board of Building Inspectors.<br />
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Surveying the damage the morning after the fire, the poet (and Chief Anatomy Professor at Harvard Medical School) Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. was moved to write a few lines about the devastation he saw from his vantage point on Beacon Hill:<br />
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<i>While far along the eastern sky<br />I saw the flags of Havoc fly,<br />As if his forces would assault<br />The sovereign of the starry vault<br />And hurl Him back the burning rain<br />That seared the cities of the plain,<br />I read as on a crimson page<br />The words of Israel's sceptred sage:--</i><br />
<i>"For riches make them wings, and they<br />Do as an eagle fly away."</i><br />
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The city rebuilt, although a few immediate changes to the downtown district. Some streets, such as Washington and federal Street, were made wider to reduce the chance of future building fires jumping intersections. Most of the replacement buildings, though, were built with few firewalls can remain pressed up against each other in the narrow streets of Boston. It would be nearly 25 years until downtown Boston was refitted with 36 inch water mains as a standard throughout the city.<br />
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Unfortunately for Boston, the city never really learned important lessons from its largest fire. More than 70 years later, Boston would suffer again from a calamitous fire, caused by both a lack of safety and a lack of foresight. But that's a story for another post.Jim O'Kanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01806624628546492210noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6952925068925494892.post-23459163145407274392012-11-02T21:14:00.001-07:002012-11-03T10:09:23.503-07:00Dom<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHaacvYkXfnxh6wME_UiDWYA8AlARUxQYj6kFniptXMQ3veea2EcbOEoHDLI0w0bhS6vHSjT6dBANaC_Xlpdb91N-q25nE85jSixUD_-NMd4VRCA9zfl0fIZ6PvnV5LeWfKar5THOn0-Q/s1600/cer929.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHaacvYkXfnxh6wME_UiDWYA8AlARUxQYj6kFniptXMQ3veea2EcbOEoHDLI0w0bhS6vHSjT6dBANaC_Xlpdb91N-q25nE85jSixUD_-NMd4VRCA9zfl0fIZ6PvnV5LeWfKar5THOn0-Q/s320/cer929.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Dom Cerulli 1927-2012</td></tr>
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My friends Mark and Garrett's dad passed away last week, and I wanted to write about him while I had a moment. His name was Dom Cerulli and he was one of the most fascinating and clever men I've ever known. This blog post is loosely based on a eulogy I gave on the day of Dom's funeral.<br />
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I’ve known Mark and his family since before I could drive a car. Since we both went to the same Catholic high school that served dozens of towns in Westchester and Putnam counties in NY, my folks would have to drive me to Mark’s house and pick me up later. I spent quite a few hours in the Cerulli home during high school.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh57bNzXD6lxidVyNvOgmo-b5ilDpil_vnUnieyGhkin7EwGUTdSA_ru9-fZUE0HdBqeRhjWJYByzrNGv_6zGfOuANycNzJfU2c5qLM8tf2-CxXVlzSB3zmEtBwSkZnCnzI31sR-jHVM8M/s1600/downbeat.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh57bNzXD6lxidVyNvOgmo-b5ilDpil_vnUnieyGhkin7EwGUTdSA_ru9-fZUE0HdBqeRhjWJYByzrNGv_6zGfOuANycNzJfU2c5qLM8tf2-CxXVlzSB3zmEtBwSkZnCnzI31sR-jHVM8M/s320/downbeat.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Dom edited Downbeat Magazine in the 50's and 60's</td></tr>
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I remember first going to the Cerulli home and seeing the incredible collection of commercial art on their walls - - original artwork from album covers, art from magazines, autographed photos, etc. Dom was in the advertising business, and he was also the editor of Down Beat Magazine, the premiere periodical about Jazz music in the 1950s and 1960s. All this stuff on the walls was the work of Mark’s dad, so I knew Dom by his work before I met him personally. <br />
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The third time I visited Mark’s house was when I first met Dom, and what struck me about him was how fascinated Dom was in - - well, simply everything. There wasn’t a topic where he didn’t show an interest, and he seemed to be able to relate a story to anything that came up. I asked him about some of his work on the walls of his den, and Dom would tell stories about a project, or people he knew whom he met during an ad campaign. Dom seemed to be everywhere during the 50’s and 60’s, and managed to be both a creator, and an appreciative audience for both the world of jazz, and the advertising world.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqOOYGnGMUruhT9JBjwYXdF4S01nMLBomgAny1HQgzQXBhyphenhyphenmsurduF02MNVux8P3PE3UZRyrI6i2cfaTxRDPYppS6OhtPUggoj0BwnasKW0Y3R4K4cpVC6Xog0roqwjszG1tXNVzVcrek/s1600/uncola.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="245" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqOOYGnGMUruhT9JBjwYXdF4S01nMLBomgAny1HQgzQXBhyphenhyphenmsurduF02MNVux8P3PE3UZRyrI6i2cfaTxRDPYppS6OhtPUggoj0BwnasKW0Y3R4K4cpVC6Xog0roqwjszG1tXNVzVcrek/s320/uncola.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Did you like the "Cola Nuts" 7-Up commercials? That was Dom's.</td></tr>
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Let me digress for a moment and talk about one of the most famous advertising campaigns in history. In 1917, the US Army hired James Montgomery Flagg to design a poster to inspire people to join the Army. The result was, of course, the famous picture of Uncle Sam saying “I Want You.” The poster became one of the most famous images of the 20th Century. Keep that poster in mind for a little bit.<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiII9Mr5ZxMV0R4JrhCFNKh1OXvJPgeE1htg0qk_FhRDePugG54pq6DseLINBC4F5eL7ZAeRBNwFbCC4LtAFk3MZdRRIcKtIYjAzsUdoFqe40jBYaU-iXA8YawvmSvnzqiX0d7TOe_mexI/s1600/iwantyou.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiII9Mr5ZxMV0R4JrhCFNKh1OXvJPgeE1htg0qk_FhRDePugG54pq6DseLINBC4F5eL7ZAeRBNwFbCC4LtAFk3MZdRRIcKtIYjAzsUdoFqe40jBYaU-iXA8YawvmSvnzqiX0d7TOe_mexI/s320/iwantyou.jpg" width="237" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Probably the most famous American ad, ever.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9l9QmVO6WPHnqoKm99cYFgp1E3vRK0an2s5sqt9SOSefLYB27X8byeRfvpRkjNjOGecnOG5W_yNBD-5J50BoQFFMql_BAC1KZz6BPuE1kI-uI1P4Sg3G_fvyfx3PN27NvYnYbcJ3ssuw/s1600/galento.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9l9QmVO6WPHnqoKm99cYFgp1E3vRK0an2s5sqt9SOSefLYB27X8byeRfvpRkjNjOGecnOG5W_yNBD-5J50BoQFFMql_BAC1KZz6BPuE1kI-uI1P4Sg3G_fvyfx3PN27NvYnYbcJ3ssuw/s320/galento.jpg" width="247" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Two-Ton Tony (right), taking on Max Baer.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Both Dom and my own father were of the same generation, and they each
had their own talented friends and heroes. Dom’s friends were in the
music industry, while my dad’s friends were professional boxers. One of
my dad’s friends was a boxer named “Two-Ton” Tony Galento, from
Brooklyn.<br />
<br />
I only met Two-Ton Tony after he had long retired, but he gave me a piece of advice that I think about a lot at times like this. He told me, “Kid (I was nine years old at the time when he told me this), you're in school every day of your life, and every life is a lesson - - if you're smart.” So, when I’m asked to talk about people and their lives, I try to think of what lesson can be found in a person's life.<br />
<br />
Let’s get back to Uncle Sam and that Army poster. Back when Mark and I were in high school, Dom worked for an advertising agency that was given the task of coming up with a new campaign for the Army - - replacing a classic campaign that was an <i>icon</i>. This would be like putting a different smile on the Mona Lisa, or rearranging the Washington Monument. But Dom was given that task and it had to be done, and the Army had to <i>like it</i> when it was done. A tall order.<br />
<br />
Back in 1917, when James Montgomery Flagg painted the portrait of Uncle Sam, he used his own face as the model for the guy on the poster. So when you’re looking at Uncle Sam, you’re actually looking at James Montgomery Flagg, the artist himself. <br />
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I think that’s the same thing that happened when Dom came up with the motto for the Army's new ad campaign. He found that model within himself, and gave us all the new phrase: “Be All You Can Be.” So, I think that’s Tony Galento’s life lesson from Dom Cerulli: “Be All You Can Be.”<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNU50KFk6lXX9igAKfvJIaMFJCQFR0pPiLnB7UwiqriOY9Qj3jAw3xQiSV6FQslzSFbfF3-lcw1M8bFvVFFJSKtSK1f-Rqw2CpXnE5bMxr-IR9VEyhYYZDVr-QUchxYMEcNvon_PMgGMc/s1600/army.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="243" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNU50KFk6lXX9igAKfvJIaMFJCQFR0pPiLnB7UwiqriOY9Qj3jAw3xQiSV6FQslzSFbfF3-lcw1M8bFvVFFJSKtSK1f-Rqw2CpXnE5bMxr-IR9VEyhYYZDVr-QUchxYMEcNvon_PMgGMc/s320/army.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<br />
Rest in Peace, Dom.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdv6gCa3EsTdA8XRmnF2ygKiOcb0YBb2YiOrvD6x5wM2fkR5979_tBnf7kTE5L92uzEYVmnEY8yjM9TCg0GrHcg_d0vYVO6DXcoFAz7MFGRtaFB7orha0MSxdKvXgVSXWdOEzB07WkK4c/s1600/domjuly4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="392" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdv6gCa3EsTdA8XRmnF2ygKiOcb0YBb2YiOrvD6x5wM2fkR5979_tBnf7kTE5L92uzEYVmnEY8yjM9TCg0GrHcg_d0vYVO6DXcoFAz7MFGRtaFB7orha0MSxdKvXgVSXWdOEzB07WkK4c/s400/domjuly4.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<br />Jim O'Kanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01806624628546492210noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6952925068925494892.post-8745042728379723372012-11-02T00:05:00.002-07:002012-11-02T08:45:43.395-07:00NX37602She only flew once, sixty-five years ago today, and she never flew higher than her own height. The man who built her was a maniac, and the man who first conceived of her knew almost nothing about aircraft. Both men hated the nickname the press pinned on her. Yet today, she's one of the most famous airplanes in the world.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhg0q09R1UR9auZSB4cBVRVcr_vjUgm0FwniEPi2iT-k8xiU1geR67nn2au1IGObfyN9wJHZhdr6tiMAvGxI0AcKCyWfUE64DsxEtMAt8rBRHF2lpZD9oiiq8UX-jVlQAYtMUPvXaG-ZNA/s1600/locke.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="257" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhg0q09R1UR9auZSB4cBVRVcr_vjUgm0FwniEPi2iT-k8xiU1geR67nn2au1IGObfyN9wJHZhdr6tiMAvGxI0AcKCyWfUE64DsxEtMAt8rBRHF2lpZD9oiiq8UX-jVlQAYtMUPvXaG-ZNA/s400/locke.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"What do you know? The damned thing *will* fly!"</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<h2>
The State of Play in 1942</h2>
Germany had Britain on the ropes at the beginning of 1942. Although the United States had been shipping lend-lease equipment to the U.K. for several years, Atlantic-cruising Nazi U-boats sank dozens of cargo ships full of armaments, with little effective interference from Allied surface ships. Without manufactured goods and raw material delivered successfully across the Atlantic, the island nation of Great Britain would lose by attrition.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjo6xn77CqzEZPM1a2j1VvX2IX0tNfXKXFYlWCF1tQ4ZH__OrBERTqKnppc0wU8eqEZDp-srPZWHDWOw1UL57Qg-n0CXSrflTCuai_JEKuSiV01F3yYNTfrEUjWFodGoTXq9f_wM8M8eW4/s1600/henrykaizer.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="315" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjo6xn77CqzEZPM1a2j1VvX2IX0tNfXKXFYlWCF1tQ4ZH__OrBERTqKnppc0wU8eqEZDp-srPZWHDWOw1UL57Qg-n0CXSrflTCuai_JEKuSiV01F3yYNTfrEUjWFodGoTXq9f_wM8M8eW4/s400/henrykaizer.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Henry Kaiser, livin' on the edge.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
One American industrialist who understood the stakes was Henry Kaiser, a ship builder and engineering contractor who owned a shipyard in Richmond, California. Kaiser held the British contract on building Liberty ships - - a Blighty-designed series of welded-frame cargo vessels able to be assembled from keel-laying to freight-ready in a matter of a few weeks. The Liberty ships were a prime target of the U-boats, and Kaiser wanted to build some kind of craft that couldn't be touched by Nazi torpedoes.<br />
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The simplest method, Kaiser thought, would be to pick the ships up, out of the water, and fly the things straight to England. Could someone build wings and propellers big enough to make one of his ships fly? He proposed this scheme to one of the few men in America smart enough and crazy enough to think the idea was plausible. <br />
<h2>
Hughes</h2>
Howard Hughes was a Texas maniac. Orphaned in his teens, he inherited his father's hugely successful oil drill bit company. The sudden millionaire Howard dropped out of the engineering program at Rice University, got married, and moved to California to get into the movie business. <br />
He produced multi-million dollar motion pictures, divorced his wife, and spent most of the 1930's dating top box-office actresses.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjso4GToM_5xPyO3mRjthm2O25_6iibkec4kPeHpkdX6yZha5mJVIckRDJ2pKZWwV0imw7_s2mu9JYvW3CH2YscdhEYS26IvhIv76yk7a5ek8-6lhJ8jmPBKsWhXEqJ0mcJf-C3N6v30wk/s1600/h1hughes.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="315" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjso4GToM_5xPyO3mRjthm2O25_6iibkec4kPeHpkdX6yZha5mJVIckRDJ2pKZWwV0imw7_s2mu9JYvW3CH2YscdhEYS26IvhIv76yk7a5ek8-6lhJ8jmPBKsWhXEqJ0mcJf-C3N6v30wk/s400/h1hughes.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Nutty Howard and his beloved H-1 Racer.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
None of those events has anything to do with Kaiser's flying boat plans -- except that Howard had a short attention span. Besides his dabbling in his dad's oil business, and the movie making, and the actress-chasing, Howard Hughes had a monumental fascination with aviation. In 1932, Howard created a new division of the Hughes Tool Company in Culver City, California. The new division, Hughes Aircraft, would build experimental monoplanes and pioneer high-performance aircraft engines. Howard would do most of the flight testing himself, buzzing through the sky in prototype aircraft such as his H-1 Racer. The H-1 would set and break several transcontinental speed records with Hughes in the cockpit, and influence the design of most fighter planes of WWII.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRYtNHaquykP_hHrTFIjxuqt8r-p6MqS_8TZ9GQ1QwP64MAs5mK5ixOy4-D786RjrUwF8a3UxlqvVZImikv7bAshisiVN4dLMNrsFNKgPCRWhcJGLswThwcMqnwkEKpfkHTYuI9-z4d3A/s1600/xf11.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="316" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRYtNHaquykP_hHrTFIjxuqt8r-p6MqS_8TZ9GQ1QwP64MAs5mK5ixOy4-D786RjrUwF8a3UxlqvVZImikv7bAshisiVN4dLMNrsFNKgPCRWhcJGLswThwcMqnwkEKpfkHTYuI9-z4d3A/s400/xf11.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Pardon my dust: Howard lands his plane a little too much in Beverly Hills.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Hughes didn't quite "get" the idea that risking the CEO's life in experimental planes was not a good thing to do. He felt that, as President of his company, he had every right to stress the latest equipment and see what parts would break off during flight. Howard obsessively kept this flight test role through several spectacular experimental plane crashes throughout WWII and beyond, including a fantastic smasheroo in the middle of a Beverly Hills neighborhood, when a prop on a prototype twin engine fighter decided to reverse direction in mid-air. Despite some horrible damage to Mr. Hughes's skull, he continued to test the planes his company built.<br />
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Kaiser met with Hughes in late 1942, explaining his idea for a "flying boat." The winged ship would need to be able to carry 750 troops from New York to London without landing. Hughes sketched out a gigantic craft, with eight engines and a 320' wingspan.<br />
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The War Department greenlit development for the ship, now named "Hercules," but refused to release rationed aluminum to build the craft. Without the availability of lightweight metals, Hughes turned to the old aviation standby, wood. Birch plywood, coated with phenolic resin, would be laid and bent over huge frames to form the outlines of the ship. When the frame was completed, the outer surface was covered with starched canvas and painted. Despite being the largest plane ever built, Hercules would use the same structural materials as the Wright Brothers' first aircraft. The press had a field day, nicknaming the plane "The Spruce Goose" and "The Flying Lumberyard."<br />
<br />
Howard Hughes became obsessed in making Hercules the world's greatest aircraft. Redesigns and construction changes pushed delivery of the aircraft past the end of World War II. The Army no longer needed such an aircraft, and a post-war Congress wanted to know why money was being wasted on the project. Hughes was aghast: could Senators not understand the important breakthroughs in aviation made by the very construction of the Hercules? During a break in a Senate investigation about war-profiteering, Hughes left DC to return to his completed ship.<br />
<h2>
Beach Balls </h2>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzj3du6VSIVT6pCMFQFEQCwT7OGn-fk0sMto0bSYAsYXqESp6ngPr3HbJI1AP9T9k2jTwQZoyvYwir7lt2oHDuxnV3iWRlo52mmrrYqu8iXCKNCSLTXelTlWKitHsZJ42jMVXfxvW6a1I/s1600/cockpithh.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="281" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzj3du6VSIVT6pCMFQFEQCwT7OGn-fk0sMto0bSYAsYXqESp6ngPr3HbJI1AP9T9k2jTwQZoyvYwir7lt2oHDuxnV3iWRlo52mmrrYqu8iXCKNCSLTXelTlWKitHsZJ42jMVXfxvW6a1I/s400/cockpithh.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Senate testimony? I'll give you "testimony."</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
On November 2nd, 1947, Howard Hughes put the Hercules in the waters of Long Beach Harbor, and began a series of taxi tests with a flight crew of 22, plus seven invited journalists and seven CEOs from the aviation industry. To ensure that the Hercules wouldn't sink with such an elite passenger list on board, the development crew stuffed dozens of inflated beach balls into the tail section, in case anything leaked while the ship began its tests on the water. Hughes wheeled the ship out to the harbor, fired up all eight engines, and taxied twice back to the Long Beach hangar. After dropping off most of the guests, Howard pointed the nose of the Hercules toward the Pacific, and began another taxiing run. This time, he throttled the engines up to 117 knots, and eased the wheel back.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEhtOdaiUYVCYpMEQ_FChD1zCNUjvl_hLhRshASJzG5s4EWf3mWWlpwCqdE2htEhqqQoILb_lyHhl4Nu6FEth2IXp85IXL8l80jxlBvVsF-OLvJRXIll9Jr6BdWi4ODCPrpsb6J3HI0ck/s1600/zoom.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="241" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEhtOdaiUYVCYpMEQ_FChD1zCNUjvl_hLhRshASJzG5s4EWf3mWWlpwCqdE2htEhqqQoILb_lyHhl4Nu6FEth2IXp85IXL8l80jxlBvVsF-OLvJRXIll9Jr6BdWi4ODCPrpsb6J3HI0ck/s400/zoom.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Zoom. Whoosh. Mission Accomplished.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
The Hercules lifted off the water and rose to an altitude of 70 feet, just nine feet shy of its own structural height. Hughes kept the ship above the waves for about a mile, and then landed back in the harbor. The aircraft worked, and that was good enough for Mr. Hughes. The ship returned to its hangar, and would never take to the air again. <br />
<br />
<h2>
McMinville</h2>
Hughes kept Hercules in its Long Beach hangar - the largest climate-controlled building at the time of its construction - for the rest of his life. A staff of 300 kept the ship prepped and ready to fly until 1962. As Hughes's mental issues became more serious later in his life, his company reduced the Hercules staff to a mere 50 workers, who maintained the equipment until Hughes's death in 1976.<br />
<br />
The Hughes Aircraft Company sold the Hercules in 1980 to a museum organization that peddled a tour of the Hercules with the retired cruise ship <i>Queen Mary</i> that was parked nearby in Long Beach Harbor. In 1988, the museum company managed to sell the thing to Disney, who tried for years to come up with a way to make money off the dinosaur plane. Disney gave up and handed the plane back to the museum organization. The museum organization didn't want the ship anymore, and scrambled to find it a new home.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZPsFIHHxrUiyAleonugQ9e1WMF4hZOwzYEoHYsvqX-Xf-eHUFnBPJJGK1nXxRioq4FsLp_ZL7y_Wf7hPyOQfoJ6qXiFkf2U-B5PxfFXjML5TDAXp24ZSYlT1jDYG4QKlZwSZd1lVZSw0/s1600/goosedisney.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="256" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZPsFIHHxrUiyAleonugQ9e1WMF4hZOwzYEoHYsvqX-Xf-eHUFnBPJJGK1nXxRioq4FsLp_ZL7y_Wf7hPyOQfoJ6qXiFkf2U-B5PxfFXjML5TDAXp24ZSYlT1jDYG4QKlZwSZd1lVZSw0/s400/goosedisney.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Well, THAT was a mistake.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
In McMinnville, Oregon, the Evergreen International Aviation company was building an aviation museum next to its world headquarters. Would it be possible, they asked, to acquire the Hercules as a centerpiece for their museum? Of course, replied the California museum group. The only problem was: how can one deliver the world's largest aircraft to a museum in the woods of Oregon?<br />
<br />
One amazing proposal: fly the ship to Oregon. Since the engines and frame had been maintained in flight-ready condition, it didn't seem like much of a stretch to clean up the motors, fill up the tanks, and zip up the coast to the mouth of the Columbia River. From there, it would only be another 100 miles or so to fly over the treetops and land at Evergreen's industrial airport in the woods. Insurance issues nixed that idea: nobody would underwrite a trip that could cause the loss of one of the rarest aircraft on the planet. Plus: who knew how to fly the thing? The flight crew was mostly dead or in their 90s, and the original staff of 16 engineers (two for each engine) spoke volumes about the reliability level (or lack thereof) with the Hercules.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOh6c02LT_OtFLhhNC5VolKVy20V-PVBRiA-0Au8zyFIr4JJX-GohJUz5wG7xV88up9ZzcPIIJhDXbvM9q0LPosM00cxJbEkAoZv7RKN0Ip0Or8vSnRZhF9653Xh1S4kdVZh0gVET7mkI/s1600/move.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOh6c02LT_OtFLhhNC5VolKVy20V-PVBRiA-0Au8zyFIr4JJX-GohJUz5wG7xV88up9ZzcPIIJhDXbvM9q0LPosM00cxJbEkAoZv7RKN0Ip0Or8vSnRZhF9653Xh1S4kdVZh0gVET7mkI/s640/move.jpg" width="563" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The more-boring, but safer, option.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Instead of the flight, Evergreen paid for technicians to disassemble the Hercules into several luggable pieces. The parts were loaded on barges and trucks, and driven or floated to Oregon. There, the ship was reassembled and stands in the Evergreen Aviation Museum's Exhibit Hall today.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgZedWNIH06u8VNxldbQZcXKQp5st62SwVE5j_ELK66Au7HBOK_n4IMWfbnWUVNFkbFLhsp493Jv-8LiM7TIKIuVyq9NKGDfD6J-lTIt6z3VPrd_MqMBtn9BgXz1wrvmQCma403-SgxxI/s1600/megoose.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="476" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgZedWNIH06u8VNxldbQZcXKQp5st62SwVE5j_ELK66Au7HBOK_n4IMWfbnWUVNFkbFLhsp493Jv-8LiM7TIKIuVyq9NKGDfD6J-lTIt6z3VPrd_MqMBtn9BgXz1wrvmQCma403-SgxxI/s640/megoose.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Me, a Sopwith Camel, and the only Spruce Goose in the World - - McMinville, Oregon.</td></tr>
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What happened to Henry Kaiser? He got out of the ship building businesses (both boats and airplanes) and bought an aluminum company (Kaiser Aluminum). Kaiser also bought into a home construction business, building many post-war neighborhoods that dot the suburbs of America to this day. Kaiser's ship building company, before Henry divested it from his portfolio, was a pioneer in health care benefits for its employees. Their health insurance department expanded into the company's cement manufacturing site in Permanente Creek, California. Kaiser's wife liked the name of the area so much, the company named the hospital it helped build the Permanente Hospital. Eventually, the health insurance section would spin off into its own company, becoming the ancestor of what's now Kaiser-Permanente.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEji1mm3B0AMP_sjK8VU29i4dQ8jWZ5DcNSEEjXRSKu1SOXVz2AkSmZCzUqgJp6BkC7TcR5j51Q3_pxFeyVrH2UwKgnsy0JSVJ6zdlQvPbs6JaRtDHijtSe1OD5zQK5PNyfImu-SqUL35hk/s1600/kp.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEji1mm3B0AMP_sjK8VU29i4dQ8jWZ5DcNSEEjXRSKu1SOXVz2AkSmZCzUqgJp6BkC7TcR5j51Q3_pxFeyVrH2UwKgnsy0JSVJ6zdlQvPbs6JaRtDHijtSe1OD5zQK5PNyfImu-SqUL35hk/s320/kp.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Yep. Those guys.</td></tr>
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<br />Jim O'Kanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01806624628546492210noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6952925068925494892.post-34538609670092722532012-10-27T13:06:00.003-07:002012-10-27T13:07:29.645-07:00A Fistful of RedstonesFifty-one years ago today, on October 27th, 1961, the largest flying machine ever built by Wernher von Braun's rocket scientists to date smashed into a million pieces two hundred and fourteen miles southeast of Cape Canaveral. This event marked a veritable victory lap for von Braun's team, and also signaled the end of a technological battle between two branches of the United States military. <br />
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Don't you love stories that start out this way? I know I do. Let's back up a bit and go over the details.<br />
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<h2>
Military Missiles</h2>
After the end of World War II, the three major branches of the military were crazy for establishing missile superiority - - not with other countries, but between the other branches of the US military. The Army led the development race, building Inter-Regional Ballistic Missiles (IRBMs) such as the Redstone and Corporal rockets under the guidance of von Braun's Peenemuende team. The Air Force, denied the benefits of Operation Paperclip, built their own Goddard-derived rockets in the Atlas and Titan series. The Navy, having no budget for a big missile development program, concentrated on their tiny Vanguard missile program.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjt4uTdEkPDgklImdBm3rHY082WOFcD2YdUBzgudRaS_VjMq2_gSMLnQBsejyJlTDy2hq6H92hXcn2V6XcUPqbCK3MrLHhe_xM5lDLNiyeC-nZu-Lj6VWtKkmFTOxj7TNmQ_6ObfPiCBw/s1600/branches.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjt4uTdEkPDgklImdBm3rHY082WOFcD2YdUBzgudRaS_VjMq2_gSMLnQBsejyJlTDy2hq6H92hXcn2V6XcUPqbCK3MrLHhe_xM5lDLNiyeC-nZu-Lj6VWtKkmFTOxj7TNmQ_6ObfPiCBw/s640/branches.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Picking the next generation of missiles was a matter of using what worked already.</td></tr>
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The success of von Braun's Jupiter rocket after the failure of the Vanguard rocket as a response to the launch of Sputnik put the Army's Redstone / von Braun team in the prime position to build future heavy-lift launch vehicles. The main restraint was that there was still a branch limitation on long-distance rocketry. The Army could still build interregional rockets, but the Air Force's Ballistic Missile Division was the only organization allowed to negotiate for boosters capable of intercontinental or orbital reach. Even after the Redstone group was assigned to the civilian NASA organization, the Air Force restrictions stood in place.<br />
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Wernher von Braun's team knew that the next generation of heavy lift vehicles would require multiple stages - - but the upper stages would have to be designed with the mandates of the Air Force in mind. Since upper stages would probably need to be designed around the Air Force's Titan booster, the next generation of the Army's first stage would need to be able to accommodate the Titan's 120-inch wide frame. <br />
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What von Braun's team didn't know was that the Air Force was working on a secretly-designed second stage named Centaur. Centaur would be fueled with liquid hydrogen (LH2), the most efficient fuel known to rocket scientists. The problem with LH2 is that although it's efficient, it's not very dense, so the requirements for fuel tank sizes would be significantly larger than the original planned Titan upper stages. In order to accommodate the Centaur upper stage, the von Braun team's new first stage would need to support a 160" diameter frame.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUoRkk43j7WElFHyNAoO_reRSV6BzhK2CBDCTTNPBJFSKK5E09BTxbz1xaDcbJi2kHt0aV7hHujGiHuGlyOQEgXGXPzEC73etxyZGN9t1drRHGYoER_EuwwXjycXh8CmiPXSQShXO0lo4/s1600/centaurdynasoar.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUoRkk43j7WElFHyNAoO_reRSV6BzhK2CBDCTTNPBJFSKK5E09BTxbz1xaDcbJi2kHt0aV7hHujGiHuGlyOQEgXGXPzEC73etxyZGN9t1drRHGYoER_EuwwXjycXh8CmiPXSQShXO0lo4/s640/centaurdynasoar.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The USAF Centaur was also supposed to power the X-20 Dyna-Soar space glider.</td></tr>
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The Huntsville team managed to rework the design of their heavy lift booster to meet the new requirement by wrapping eight Redstone tanks around a central Jupiter tank assembly. The new vehicle, first named Juno V and then Saturn I, would launch with eight Rocketdyne H-1 engines capable of delivering a total thrust of 1.5 million pounds of force. The eight Redstone tanks, plus the Jupiter core were known technologies, so redesigns of new tanks and feed mechanisms weren't necessary. The slight weight disadvantage of multiple tanks had a tremendous offset in multi-year development costs that were avoided.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_avp_3Q4iKhMIuh7B-h2DzkMYzQXhUnwtftbZ_FJWLAi1YsAic_VGEL4XlEKee04fgNLQ3BfKiqwlGDMhk2DwrHeoeqg-JibU3oGKFM80QBgslLaW_1lVxOYRsgi3IUWwUww3rIZpmjQ/s1600/saturnstructure.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_avp_3Q4iKhMIuh7B-h2DzkMYzQXhUnwtftbZ_FJWLAi1YsAic_VGEL4XlEKee04fgNLQ3BfKiqwlGDMhk2DwrHeoeqg-JibU3oGKFM80QBgslLaW_1lVxOYRsgi3IUWwUww3rIZpmjQ/s640/saturnstructure.jpg" width="480" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Wrap a Jupiter rocket with eight Redstones? That's a Saturn I.</td></tr>
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<h2>
Barging In</h2>
The Huntsville rocket scientist slapped together a Saturn I booster in no time, and ready for launch in early 1961. A static test at the Redstone Arsenal broke windows eight miles away from the test stand. The booster was too large to be transported by rail, so the Saturn would travel by barge to Cape Canaveral. In a pre-GPS world, the barge ran into some literal snags, as nautical maps were not accurate enough to note sand bars and shallows along the Gulf Coast route. After un-beaching the barge on several occasions, the Saturn I arrived at Pad 34 in August of 1961.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZ8PDu-fnX67G_glDGxpp-sxtWTYKabbs6nuSVDZwDqrQhETikyAsSXQB4OBUY2kJ3ojMo_AxCVznBw80WTNvGUycp4YeLw81CrTOqe2F1JPW9yPL7z6p3MbZw0eRnUbg26NC8AN7Qh64/s1600/compromise.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="478" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZ8PDu-fnX67G_glDGxpp-sxtWTYKabbs6nuSVDZwDqrQhETikyAsSXQB4OBUY2kJ3ojMo_AxCVznBw80WTNvGUycp4YeLw81CrTOqe2F1JPW9yPL7z6p3MbZw0eRnUbg26NC8AN7Qh64/s640/compromise.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Heading for Cape Canaveral aboard the barge <i>Compromise</i>. Managed to beach itself four times.</td></tr>
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One downside of the Huntsville crew's speed in construction was that the Air Force's upper stage (now called the S-IV) was nowhere near launch-ready in its development process. NASA decided to build a dummy upper stage, filling the large empty tank with water ballast equal to the proposed weight of the S-IV.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhW-z0lTJdHgLiUsH4xN36GGVmEvJZk_xro7OmjOL0Tsmp0W1hGJyENkByQn_AmnJ-FMlgzmcsMjpUpaEGSnjJbGIDaY5rYOib3z_kAXvYggJJeuTbikdmtkPhtInxqAxiPDwfZHSZBMP8/s1600/siv.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="504" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhW-z0lTJdHgLiUsH4xN36GGVmEvJZk_xro7OmjOL0Tsmp0W1hGJyENkByQn_AmnJ-FMlgzmcsMjpUpaEGSnjJbGIDaY5rYOib3z_kAXvYggJJeuTbikdmtkPhtInxqAxiPDwfZHSZBMP8/s640/siv.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A working S-IV upper stage wouldn't be available for launch until 1964.</td></tr>
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On the morning of October 26th, 1961, the launch operations crew filled the nine tank assemblies with RP-1 kerosene and liquid oxygen. The only delay in the entire process was a brief hold for clouds and winds that would affect photography. After a one-hour delay, all holds were cleared, and the folks in the blockhouse ignited the eight solid propellent gas generator (SPGG) motors, that fired the liquid fuel pumps and started the H-1 engines. Saturn SA-1 lifted off the Pad 34 "milk stool" and headed out over the Atlantic, reaching an altitude of 84.6 miles only four minutes and nine seconds later. The water ballast accelerated to 3,611 mph before falling back to the ocean in an arc that stretched two hundred miles from Cape Canaveral.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjw4e_Dn2Z3vCXomkwr07wRQuTJK6ZpZiKn0eOns_qDRPbqrBmIfT5VCFBwW7ioviNGT9ccSs9IxoyNxZPpO3XfwqZ_HA7v2VFUE7HPhy9gJicXiSSmOuCvck69oT_tOWPNXuWcSyPkCqU/s1600/sa1launch.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjw4e_Dn2Z3vCXomkwr07wRQuTJK6ZpZiKn0eOns_qDRPbqrBmIfT5VCFBwW7ioviNGT9ccSs9IxoyNxZPpO3XfwqZ_HA7v2VFUE7HPhy9gJicXiSSmOuCvck69oT_tOWPNXuWcSyPkCqU/s640/sa1launch.jpg" width="498" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">We have liftoff, 27 October 1961, 12:30pm ET</td></tr>
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Except for an early engine cutoff due to an underfilling of the tanks, the flight was flawless. The von Braun team displayed a mastery of heavy lift launch systems that would not be superseded by the Air Force ballistic missile group in building the way to the Moon landings.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJZJnLTx6gp9DM_RPyiHV8MN_pSz74Ws6gkX84mschrkugIysp7IUtqaIEejuvgUeAju7xo50x0U1lCekatkWRqy8HfyQ0w5AGfAKUIXMc8xRTKSK26JYQjELvi_cVz1qrxUb3S8TdlpA/s1600/sat1jfkvonbraun.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="490" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJZJnLTx6gp9DM_RPyiHV8MN_pSz74Ws6gkX84mschrkugIysp7IUtqaIEejuvgUeAju7xo50x0U1lCekatkWRqy8HfyQ0w5AGfAKUIXMc8xRTKSK26JYQjELvi_cVz1qrxUb3S8TdlpA/s640/sat1jfkvonbraun.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">After the success of SA-1, Saturn was the only way to the Moon for JFK.</td></tr>
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Pad 34 would become the initial platform for Apollo-Saturn development flights, and would provide key data for the follow-on Saturn V Moon ships. And all that work began fifty-one years ago today.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUy5xkGwjV5LeZYJeK2r_4x-yZCqYrppOgUy9etZnHSAnI_pb3n-Vuqmp3nqZecRP3Gy4WWjT-HpT7Z-mOBiYMWSqIcc48XgzyQ5hFtxVqd4R1TkcW99urNAOkaaSAPCIYic9OBbOAhuk/s1600/stool34.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUy5xkGwjV5LeZYJeK2r_4x-yZCqYrppOgUy9etZnHSAnI_pb3n-Vuqmp3nqZecRP3Gy4WWjT-HpT7Z-mOBiYMWSqIcc48XgzyQ5hFtxVqd4R1TkcW99urNAOkaaSAPCIYic9OBbOAhuk/s640/stool34.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">You can visit Pad 34 today on the Kennedy Space Center tour. The milk stool still stands. </td></tr>
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<br />Jim O'Kanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01806624628546492210noreply@blogger.com0