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.