Up to Speed

Visionaries

The National Air and Space Museum’s 2023 Michael Collins Trophy winners

The winners of this year’s National Air and Space Museum’s Michael Collins Trophy have given humanity never-before-seen glimpses of our universe. As an astronaut on Apollo 8, William Anders—recipient of the Lifetime Achievement award—was responsible for photographing and documenting the lunar far side, while the James Webb Space Telescope Team—recipient of the Current Achievement award—has built the most powerful telescope ever deployed in space.

The successor to the venerable Hubble Space Telescope, Webb’s large segmented mirror and advanced instrumentation are being used to study nearly every phase of the history of our universe, ranging from the birth of the first galaxies to the evolution of our own solar system. “This amazing achievement has been made possible over many years by the dedication of the thousands of people on the team, who have pushed the boundaries of technology to deliver this spectacular space telescope,” said Mark Clampin, director of the astrophysics division for the science mission directorate at NASA Headquarters.

Humankind saw the far side of the moon for the first time thanks to Bill Anders, who has dedicated his life to aerospace, first as a pilot, then as an astronaut, and eventually in the private and nonprofit sectors.

During the Apollo 8 crew’s fourth orbit of the moon, Anders took the famous “Earthrise” photograph, which is considered one of the most important images of the 20th century. “We came all this way to explore the moon, and the most important thing is that we discovered the Earth,” he said.

Anders and the James Webb team received their awards at a ceremony held on March 23 at the Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia. The trophy features a miniature version of the “Web of Space” sculpture, which was created by John Safer.

Meet the “New Guys”

John H. Glenn Lecture in Space History

In 1978, NASA selected its most diverse astronaut class yet, including the first Black and Asian-American astronauts and its first female astronauts—among them Sally Ride and Kathryn Sullivan, the first American women respectively to fly into space and perform an extravehicular activity.

The new class of astronauts was also notable for its broad range of educational and career backgrounds. In addition to pilots, there were scientists, engineers, and doctors.

Six of the “Thirty-Five New Guys,” as they were known, were women. (“We didn’t want to become ‘the girl astronauts,’ distinct and separate from the guys,” recalled Sullivan in an interview.) In honor of the 45th anniversary of their selection, the Museum’s 2023 John H. Glenn Lecture in Space History will feature three of the women from the Class of 1978—Sullivan, Anna Fisher, and Rhea Seddon—who will talk about their experiences.

This program will take place September 6, 2023, at 8 p.m. at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia, and streamed live on YouTube. Free tickets will be available soon.

From Jules Verne to Saturn V

How Hermann Oberth Created the Future

One hundred years ago, the world entered the Space Age. The event that started it all didn’t have the drama of the Sputnik launch in 1957 or the spectacle of the first liquid-fuel rocket launch in 1926. It began in 1923 with the publication of a slim 92-page book in Germany by Hermann Oberth titled Die Rakete zu den Planetenräumen (The Rocket into Planetary Space). In it, Oberth discussed the feasibility of human spaceflight, presented the basic equations of rocketry, and explained why liquid propellants could vastly exceed the performance of gunpowder rockets.

“The scientific community, in general, did not take the possibility of spaceflight seriously and many thought it was an impossibility, for various reasons,” says Frank H. Winter, the former curator of rocketry at the National Air and Space Museum and author of Prelude to the Space Age—The Rocket Societies: 1924–1940. “It was mainly considered a fantasy, only suitable for fictional stories by Jules Verne and others.”

Oberth played a key role in the transformation of fiction into fact. Born of German parents in 1894 in Transylvania, he had been captivated by Verne’s writings. But his own calculations revealed that Verne’s fanciful method of spaceflight—shooting a bullet-shape capsule out of a massive cannon—would be fatal to human passengers.

His proposed alternative for space travel by liquid-fuel rockets would become the topic of his physics dissertation at the University of Heidelberg, which he submitted in 1922. His dissertation was rejected, but he published it as a book a year later.

Others had written on spaceflight prior to Oberth. In Russia, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky had published in 1903 the first scientifically sound proposal to use liquid-fuel rockets for exploring space. But, Winter says, “his publications were only published out of pocket in small numbers and saw very limited circulation, even in his own country.” And, in 1920, the Smithsonian published American physicist Robert Goddard’s monograph, A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes. “But the big difference between Oberth and Goddard is that Oberth stressed the feasibility of the development of the liquid-propellant rocket for crewed flight into space,” says Winter. “Goddard never did and was only concentrating at that time on the much weaker and less efficient solid-propellant rockets” to explore the upper atmosphere. Unfortunately, says Winter, newspapers “mistakenly believed that he was actually building and preparing to fly a rocket to the moon.”

Oberth’s work inspired interest in rocketry and space travel in the German-speaking world—including Wernher von Braun. Decades later, Oberth would be invited to the launch of the Saturn V that sent the Apollo 11 astronauts to the moon. Jules Verne would have been impressed.

A Lively Livery

Indigenous artist Crystal Kaakeeyáa Rose Demientieff Worl likes to envision how her artwork can wrap around objects of various shapes. That’s why her murals, which can be seen in Alaskan cities and Seattle, appear not only on walls, but also on vehicles—a bus, an ambulance, and most recently, an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737-800.

The passenger jet, now bearing a swirling, blue-and-white livery, has been named Xáat Kwáani (Salmon People). It’s the first aircraft in the history of any domestic airline to be named in an Alaska Native language and to depict the ancestral importance of salmon through Northwest Coast formline art. The mural replaces the previous livery, “Salmon Thirty-Salmon II,” which was unveiled in 2012 and retired in April.

Days of Future Past

Two generations of lunar exploration came together on May 18, when the crew of the forthcoming Artemis II mission—commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, mission specialist Christina Koch, and mission specialist (and Canadian Space Agency astronaut) Jeremy Hansen—visited the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., to tour the Destination Moon gallery. The crew and the other guests were shown around the exhibition by curators Teasel Muir-Harmony and Jennifer Levasseur, getting close-up views of artifacts such as the Apollo 11 command module, the F-1 engine that powered the first stage of the Saturn V, and Neil Armstrong’s Apollo 11 spacesuit.

“It’s unbelievable thinking that our stories could be told on these walls one day, and that people will find inspiration there,” said Koch. “But that inspiration is exactly why we think this mission is so important.”

This article is from the Spring issue of Air & Space Quarterly, the National Air and Space Museum's signature magazine that explores topics in aviation and space, from the earliest moments of flight to today. Explore the full issue.

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