Space Exploration: Purpose and History
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Transcript of Space Exploration: Purpose and History
1 Space Exploration: Purpose and History Trey Smith, APO Merit Badge University, Feb. 18, 1999
Space Exploration: Purpose and History
Trey SmithFebruary 18, 1999
2 Space Exploration: Purpose and History Trey Smith, APO Merit Badge University, Feb. 18, 1999
Reasons to Explore Space
10. International Diplomacy9. Place a spy satellite over the Super Bowl8. Researching the Universe7. Researching the Sun, Moon, and planets6. Technology spin-offs
3 Space Exploration: Purpose and History Trey Smith, APO Merit Badge University, Feb. 18, 1999
Reasons to Explore Space
5. Space applications4. Natural resources3. Get Marvin the Martian’s autograph2. Places to live
1. BECAUSE IT’S THERE!
4 Space Exploration: Purpose and History Trey Smith, APO Merit Badge University, Feb. 18, 1999
Visions of Space Travel
Once you have flown, you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward; for there you have been, there you long to return.
-Leonardo da Vinci
When ships to sail the void between the stars have been invented, there will also be men who come forward to sail those ships.
-Johannes Kepler
5 Space Exploration: Purpose and History Trey Smith, APO Merit Badge University, Feb. 18, 1999
Jules Verne
• His books inspired space travel visionaries
• Written in France around the time of the American Civil War
• Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
• Around the World in Eighty Days
6 Space Exploration: Purpose and History Trey Smith, APO Merit Badge University, Feb. 18, 1999
From the Earth to the Moon
• Set in the United States, Baltimore Gun Club
• Three men travel in a shell launched by a cannon
• Technical accuracy– Used retro-rockets– Slightly wrong about zero-g– Cannon idea still current
• In later life, Verne worried that technology was proceeding too quickly
7 Space Exploration: Purpose and History Trey Smith, APO Merit Badge University, Feb. 18, 1999
Konstantin Tsiolkovsky
• Father of human space flight, around the time of the Wright Brothers
• Russian teacher, became interested in space as a young boy
• Understood weightlessness, escape velocity, rocket equation
• Invented staging, attitude control with gyroscopes, thrust vectoring
The Earth is the cradle of Mankind, but we cannot live in the cradle forever. (1899)
8 Space Exploration: Purpose and History Trey Smith, APO Merit Badge University, Feb. 18, 1999
Tsiolkovsky: Cosmic Philosophy
• Control of space is human destiny• The 16 stages of progress include
interstellar travel• Understanding of the laws of nature
will end suffering• Space travel is necessary to study
nature
9 Space Exploration: Purpose and History Trey Smith, APO Merit Badge University, Feb. 18, 1999
Robert Goddard
• Turned space flight from vision to engineering• At 16, he was inspired by H. G. Wells' War of the Worlds• Imagined travel to Mars and dedicated his life to space flight• In college, his tongue-in-cheek paper which suggested a moon
shot was ridiculed• Later in his life he was careful to avoid publicity
It is difficult to say what is impossible, for the dream of yesterday is the hope of today and reality of tomorrow.
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Space Exploration: Purpose and History Trey Smith, APO Merit Badge University, Feb. 18, 1999
Robert Goddard
• In 1926, he launched the first liquid-fuel rocket
• Patented 214 inventions related to rocketry
• Later, working with the U.S. Army, invented the bazooka and JATO
• His engineering results were applied to the V-2 project in Germany
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Space Exploration: Purpose and History Trey Smith, APO Merit Badge University, Feb. 18, 1999
Hermann Oberth
• Spread space flight ideas to Germany• Read Verne's From the Earth to the Moon until he knew it by
heart• At 14 started to study space travel mathematically on his own• Studied medicine, worked as a medic in World War I
Rockets can be built so powerfully as to be capable of carrying a man aloft.
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Space Exploration: Purpose and History Trey Smith, APO Merit Badge University, Feb. 18, 1999
Hermann Oberth
• After the war his dissertation on rocketry was rejected (!)
• Followed Tsiolkovsky's work, proving that rockets capable of carrying humans were possible (1923)
• Taught von Braun, assisted with V-2 rockets and Explorer I
• Late in life, wrote political philosophy
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Space Exploration: Purpose and History Trey Smith, APO Merit Badge University, Feb. 18, 1999
Werner von Braun
• At 13, inspired by Oberth's Rocketry into Interplanetary Space• Strapped rockets onto a wagon and let it roar across town• Frustrated because he couldn't do the math, he studied harder
and graduated at the head of his class
The greatest gain from space travel consists in the extension of our knowledge. In a hundred years this newly won knowledge will pay huge and unexpected dividends.
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Space Exploration: Purpose and History Trey Smith, APO Merit Badge University, Feb. 18, 1999
Werner von Braun
• During World War II, led the V-2 project at Peenemunde
• Captured by the United States at the end of the war
• Led the U.S. Army team that launched Explorer-I, first U.S. satellite
• Built the Saturn V booster that carried Apollo to the Moon
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Space Exploration: Purpose and History Trey Smith, APO Merit Badge University, Feb. 18, 1999
Sergei Korolev
• Father of the Russian space program
• In the early 1930s he met Tsiolkovsky and devoted himself to spaceflight
• His rocket club was noticed by the Red Army
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Space Exploration: Purpose and History Trey Smith, APO Merit Badge University, Feb. 18, 1999
Sergei Korolev
• Stalinist purges sent him to a Siberian gulag
• Later he was moved to an "intellectual work camp"
• In 1946, he started developing ICBMs
• Even while doing military work, he used science instruments
• He led the Sputnik project and Russian moon attempts
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Space Exploration: Purpose and History Trey Smith, APO Merit Badge University, Feb. 18, 1999
Buzz Aldrin
• Bridges old and new astronaut corps• After Korea, went back to get a Ph.D.• Invented space docking and EVA procedures• Flew with Apollo 11 because of his math skill• Today, a spokesman for Mars exploration
We who walked on the Moon were privileged to represent the hopes and dreams of all humanity. For one crowning moment, we were creatures ofthe cosmic ocean, an epoch that a thousand years hence may be seen as the signature of our century.