Celebrating 50 years in orbit

The Mercury 7 astronauts were enormous American heroes, and
John Glenn was the biggest name of them all. Glenn became
 the first American to orbit the Earth 50 years ago, on
Feb. 20, 1962. Photo: NASA.

For a nation that sometimes seems obsessed with meaningless milestones, there sure wasn’t much hullabaloo today to mark the 50th anniversary of the first American orbital space flight. On this date in 1962 John Glenn orbited the Earth three times, and it was the first small step of the giant leap to the Moon by the end of the decade.

Roger Launius, curator of the space section of the National Air and Space Museum at the Smithsonian and a former NASA chief historian, spoke Sunday at the Museum of Flight in Seattle about the historical significance of that first orbital mission.

“John Glenn, the most popular of the Mercury 7 astronauts, the one who was the most glib, the most forthcoming, the most extroverted, the one who spoke so incredibly well about everything, was the man who carried the standard for Americans into Earth orbit,” Launius said. “It seems quite fitting that he did so.”

Launuis spoke with true affection for Glenn, whom he knows well and describes as one of the nicest men he has ever met. One of the more interesting stories Launius told during the talk was about how Glenn practically smuggled a drugstore camera onto his Friendship 7 flight.

“Nobody at NASA at the time seemed to realize that people would want pictures of Earth from space,” Launius marveled about the agency that now puts out terabytes worth of photos. “Hard to believe. But they were engineers and they were mostly concerned with the technical stuff.”

GI Joe was NOT the first man in space, but many of us who grew
up in the 1960s had the GI Joe Mercury capsule, and splashed
 it down in whatever bodies of water we could create in our
backyards. This one is on display at Seattle's Museum of Flight.
Photo: Greg Scheiderer.

“[Glenn] took those pictures, they were developed and released to the public, and everybody went crazy, and everybody at NASA said, ‘Why didn’t I think of that?’” Launius said. “It set a standard for what would become normal activity of all human spaceflight missions up to the present.”

The Mercury 7 astronauts achieved hero status even before they accomplished much of anything, which Launius said baffled most of them. But he said the recognition was deserved as the astronauts were the point people for an enormous effort.

“It’s important to remember that while these guys get the fame and the accolades—and clearly they deserve that; they’re the ones risking their lives in a very difficult setting—they have thousands of people behind them making it possible for them to do that,” Launius said.

Glenn had the right stuff to achieve greater fame than any of the others. Launius said that Glenn quit the space program out of concern he would never get to fly again; NASA probably would not want to risk losing the most visible icon of the space age. When Glenn finally did fly again he created quite a stir. It was 1998 when he flew on a mission of the space shuttle Discovery and became, at 77, the oldest person to travel in space. Launius noted that by then the shuttle missions had become mundane in the public eye.

Astronauts rode in Mercury capsules less than 10 feet long and
barely six feet in diameter at the base. The thing hurtled through
 space at speeds greater than 17,000 MPH. This mockup is
at the Museum of Flight. Photo: Greg Scheiderer.

“John Glenn is approved to fly into space a second time, and it again is like 1962,” Launius said. “Everybody is excited, all the media show up, and the public is energized in ways I had never seen previously. It was a stunning accomplishment, and it says a lot about the character and the mindset of the public in relationship to this hero that goes back now 50 years.”

Launius is amazed at what we accomplished in such a short time after the Mercury 7 astronauts were introduced in 1959.

“Within a decade we were standing on the Moon and putting the American flag on it, and demonstrating to the world that we are second to none when it comes to science and technology,” he said. “That’s fundamentally what Apollo was about.”

Now, Launius says, we’re poised to take the next giant leap.

“Earth orbit is no longer a frontier. When John Glenn flew in 1962 it was very much a frontier,” he said. “This is now a normal realm of human activity.”

“In 50 years we’ve gone a long way,” he added. “One would like to think in the next 50 years we will go much beyond this.”

Debunking 2012's doomsday

Alice Enevoldsen says the notion that the world is going to end this December has become something of a “kitchen sink” of hoaxes. Fully seven different doomsday scenarios are being put forward as causes of our imminent demise.

Predictions that the world is coming to an end
in December represent a kitchen sink of hoaxes,
according to Alice Enevoldsen, author of Alice's
Astro Info and an educator at the Pacific Science
Center. Enevoldsen debunked the doomsayers at
this week's meeting of the Seattle Astronomical Society.
Photo: Greg Scheiderer.

“It’s really cool how wrong they are,” Enevoldsen, planetarium specialist for the Pacific Science Center and author of Alice’s Astro Info, said during a talk this week at a meeting of the Seattle Astronomical Society. It was difficult to detect any signs of panic among the society membership, and there was much levity in the discussion. Enevoldsen said that while she’s not concerned about the destruction of Earth, the hoax is not entirely a laughing matter.

“The thing about the 2012 hoax is that it is hurting people. There are children writing to scientists saying ‘I’m scared that I’m not going to grow up.’ That just gives me the shivers,” she said. “There are children threatening to kill themselves. This is not OK with me.”

“That’s one of the reasons I use the word hoax. Anybody who supports this non-science stuff about how the world is going to end in 2012 is supporting children threatening to kill themselves.”

Much of the talk about impending doom is fueled by a strange mashup of three stories: the fictional planet Nibiru (and its ancient astronauts) cooked up by novelist Zecharia Sitchin, predictions by “psychic” Nancy Lieder that a “Planet X” would slam into Earth, and the 2009 disaster film 2012. Enevoldsen expressed dismay that people can be swayed by movies, pointed out Lieder’s original prediction was that “X” would smack us in 2003, and noted that astronomers have found no evidence of anything large with the remotest chance of colliding with us.

“You guys all know if there’s a planet that’s close enough to hit Earth at the end of this year we would be able to see it by now,” she told the society gathering.

Another misconception that is driving talk that the end of the world is nigh is that the Mayan calendar “ends” on Dec. 21 because the Maya somehow knew that was the last day.

“Today’s Maya all think we’re insane talking about how they think the world’s going to end,” Enevoldsen said. She explained that while we use month, day, and year to describe any date, the Maya “long count” uses five numbers to do so. A kin is a day, a uinal is about 20 days, a tun is about a year, a katun is roughly 20 years, and a baktun is about 400 years. By coincidence, they all re-set in December.

“It just rolls over. It’s like an odometer,” Enevoldsen said. “It’s not ending, we’re rolling over to the next count.” She said it is something like our turn of the century.

“If I were using the Mayan long count I would be pretty excited on Dec. 20 of this year because it means I get to change over all the numbers on my calendar,” she said. “This is a cool thing, but it’s kind of meaningless.”

Several other apocalyptic notions are included in the kitchen sink, some of them with at least a grain of truth.

• The Earth’s magnetic poles will shift, causing earthquakes and leaving us exposed to radiation. Enevoldsen said we’re sort of due for a shift, but there’s no reason to believe it will happen this year. It’s happened before and we’re still here.
• The Earth’s rotational poles will shift. Enevoldsen said it would take a collision with a massive object to make that happen. There’s nothing on the radar that is on a collision course.
• Solar maximum will arrive and the Sun will zap us with cosmic rays. 2012 does promise to be an active year for sunspots and such, but scientists think the true maximum won’t get here until 2013. This is a roughly 11-year cycle that hasn’t wiped us out yet.
• The planets will align, causing lots of disruption. Enevoldsen pointed out that this simply isn’t true.
• We’ll be lined up with the galactic plane and the center of the galaxy, causing lots of disruption. Enevoldsen said there are some half a dozen definitions of the galactic plane, and there’s no reason to believe that our periodic passes through it mean anything. And we’re aligned with the center of the galaxy every year around the winter solstice.

Enevoldsen suggested not simply dismissing people who have concern about 2012, but instead validating their interest in the subject. But, she said it’s important to share the facts in order to quash the hoax, and suggest astronomical activities to share, such as this year’s solar eclipse or the transit of Venus. She added that professional help might be in order for those truly gripped by fear that the world is doomed.

The 2012 hoax has received enough attention that many mainstream media have taken on the task of providing more information. Enevoldsen suggested the website 2012hoax.org as a great source about the topic. She’s also written her own paper, published by the Astronomical Society of the Pacific and aimed at educators, that explains many of these concepts in greater detail.

Astronaut Harris talks about the dream of space

Dr. Bernard Harris is like many of us who grew up in the 1960s, with dreams and interests inspired by the space race and the Apollo 11 Moon landing. It was a little different for Harris, an African American who was 13 when Neil Armstrong took that one small step.

Dr. Bernard Harris, retired astronaut and
founder of the Harris Foundation, spoke
Feb. 4 at the Museum of Flight in Seattle.

“It was not only a giant leap for them, but for this little boy to look at that little back and white television and say that he wanted to follow in their footsteps was powerful, because for someone like me, it had never been done before,” Harris explained. “As I looked at who America chose as their right stuff, as you recall there were seven white guys that started that program. There were no minorities, certainly no African Americans, none that I could see out front, and there were no women in the program. Thank God things have changed since that time.”

Harris, who in 1995 became the first African American to walk in space, spoke Feb. 4 at the Museum of Flight in Seattle as part of the museum’s observation of Black History Month and in connection with its Michael P. Anderson Memorial Aerospace Program. Harris told the audience at the museum that he didn’t let the all-white nature of the early space program deter him.

“The lesson for the young folks is that if you have a dream, don’t let what you might see around you that you might think of as an obstacle,” he said. “I would say reverse it and think of it as a challenge. Don’t let that interfere with you accomplishing your dream.”

Harris is big on dreams. He has written a book titled Dream Walker, and he calls dreams the “reality of the future.”

“In order to have a future, you must have a dream,” Harris said. “In order to have a future you must have the ability to see yourself doing whatever it is that you want to do in life.”

Harris is not just a retired astronaut, he’s a scientist and a doctor and a businessman who heads a venture capital firm and established the Harris Foundation to support science, technology, engineering, and math education. Given that background, and the fact that the Anderson program also is focused on education, it wasn’t surprising to hear Harris build a close tie between dreams and education.

“Education is the way to fulfill dreams,” he said. “I see education as the value proposition for human achievement.”

Anderson was a Spokane native who died in 2003 when the space shuttle Columbia wrecked. Harris said astronauts know the danger they’re getting into, but carry on.

“At the heart of all of this is this notion that we would rather die doing what we want to do in life and accomplishing a dream than sit around and let life pass us by,” he said.

Harris gets a little agitated when he hears talk about the “end” of the space program.

“We still have the mandate as an agency to go forward; to put people on the Moon, to put people on near earth asteroids, and perhaps put people on Mars,” Harris said. “All of that work is still being done. The only significant change is that the next generation vehicle is going to be done by private industry.”

“The space program is not going away, it’s just beginning,” he added. “I think it’s going to allow us to do things that have not been done before, and we won’t be held hostage by government restraints and budgets.”

Let's get Pluto and New Horizons on a postage stamp

Postage doubled between the time of Project Mercury
and the Moon landing. And airmail was all the way up
to a dime. Stamps from the Greg Scheiderer collection.

I find it fascinating how often my interest in space and astronomy sends me off on a mental trip to another place and time. Beyond the notion that my eyeball often captures photons that left their point of origin before the dawn of human civilization, I sometimes find that the hobby moves me around even within my own lifetime.

It happened again today. I learned during my morning reading about the newly launched effort to get the U.S. Postal Service to issue a commemorative stamp depicting the New Horizons mission to Pluto. This leads me to a confession: I’m a former philatelist.

This is a deep, dark secret that not even my wife knew about. I hadn’t had the stamp album out of the box in probably 40 years. Yet the thing kept following me through nine moves, and probably even more efforts to jettison junk. Somehow, this morning, I found the box, opened it up, and went in search of some of those space stamps I remember so well. As the collected works spread out to take up most of the dining room table, my wife walked in and, with a puzzled look, asked “What’s all that stuff.” Well, its the stamp collection, of course. (It had been in that box she kept asking me to move to another spot after the latest move, back into the house after last year’s remodeling project.)

Many nations issued stamps commemorating space heroes. Here
is a stamp from Mongolia depicting Yuri Gagarin, a Qatar stamp
 of Neil Armstrong, one from Romania with Wally Schirra, and
a Hungarian stamp of John Glenn. From the Greg Scheiderer collection.

Among the valued items in my stamp box are my stamp collecting merit badge pamphlet and my handwritten notes, on 3×5 cards, for the presentation I made to earn the badge. In the notes I listed three reasons for stamp collecting: money, fun, and learning about other countries. At least one of those is true; stamp collecting is the only reason I know where Qatar is. The Middle-Eastern country issued some gorgeous stamps in the day. Though, now that I think about it, I’m having fun with it today, too! As for the money part, I don’t expect that the stamps a 12-year-old could buy in 1969 for 50 cents per bag amount to much cash value, but if you’re an appraiser who found this post by Googling “million-dollar space stamps” please let me know. (I’ll find a way to monetize this blog yet!)

I wonder if my interest in space had something to do with my interest in stamp collecting. As a kid growing up in the 1960s I was fascinated by the space race, and the stamps of many countries depicted the achievements of space adventures. This wasn’t limited to the United States and the Soviet Union. Many countries issued space commemoratives. Soviet-bloc nations were big on what the Russians were doing, but even tiny places like Dominica, Togo, and Rwanda issued space stamps. Space exploration and the Moon landing captured the imagination of the entire world, not just little space dreamers like me. Somehow my stamp collection languished for four decades. But today I’m glad I have it.

Concept art by Dan Durda for a postage stamp commemorating
the New Horizons mission to Pluto. The New Horizons team is
pushing for the stamp through an online petition to the
U.S. Postal Service.

I’m a big fan of Pluto and think the stamp idea is a worthy one. If we’re going to stick with busting Pluto down to dwarf status, the least we can do is to remind snail-mail users and stamp collectors that the first space mission out that way is due to arrive in July 2015. Organizers say we’ve got to start now in order to have the stamp ready for sticking in three years. It can take that long to navigate the red tape!

So go here and sign the online petition to request a Pluto and New Horizons stamp. The aim is to collect 100,000 signatures to send to the USPS, and they’ve got 4,300 of them as of this writing. That’s not much progress, but the effort is just under way, and getting a boost from the likes of the Emily Lakdawalla of the Planetary Society, Alan Boyle at Cosmic Log, Space.com, Sky & Telescope, and a host of others. Boyle is a big Pluto fan and is the author of The Case for Pluto: How a Little Planet Made a Big Difference.

Let’s show our love for space nuts, stamp collectors, and dwarf planets. Power to Pluto!