December 2014

Treasurer’s report:

November 1 beginning balance 1311.33

3 renewals at 60.00 total

Ending balance November 30 1371.33

Next meeting Jan 5—program not determined

Astronomy news:

October 23—large sunspot could see w/o telescope. By Nov. 10 had rotated to the back side of the sun. November 18 came around again, but smaller.

Rosetta-Philae landing in November on comet 67P. Photographs from the comet show “towers” taller than the Eiffel Tower. Can see dimples on the comet’s surface where the lander hit and then rebounded. Color of comet is reddish-brown.

Geminids Dec 13-14. Best to look before moon comes up after midnight.

To streamline communications, Racheeta has set up a google group for members:

bvilleastro-members@googlegroups.com

Kane Elementary presentation: They want a presentation for the 4th and 5th grades; Steve says will wait until at least have a good planet and moon display to show them. Feb. 26 would be a good night. Virgil will do the presentation.

Kansas Cosmosphere presentation by Craig Brockmeier:

Website www.cosmo.org

Craig passed out guides to the Cosmosphere to those present at the meeting.

The Cosmosphere began as a planetarium in 1962, set up by Patty Carey (of the Carey-Morton Salt family) in the Poultry Building on the Kansas State Fairgrounds.

Highlights of the Cosmosphere include:

Key items on display (this list from Wikipedia):

• Liberty Bell 7 Mercury spacecraft, recovered from the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. It is the only flown spacecraft owned by a museum outside the National Air and Space Museum.

• Gemini X space capsule

• Apollo 13 command module Odyssey

• An actual Apollo White Room

• A Titan II rocket used in the Gemini program

• A Russian Vostok space capsule

• A replica of the X-1 flown by Chuck Yeager, Glamorous Glennis, used in the filming of The Right Stuff

• An engine from Glamorous Glennis flown by Yeager

• An X-15 rocket engine

• A U.S. Air Force SR-71 Blackbird reconnaissance plane

• A backup version of the Vanguard 1 satellite

• Moon rock collected during Apollo 11

• A Mercury-Redstone rocket

• Restored versions of World War II V-1 and V-2 rockets

• Prototype and space-flown American and Russian spacesuits

• A full-scale mock-up of Space Shuttle Endeavour (left side only)

• A section from the Berlin Wall - last section removed

• A Lunar Rover

• A Lunar Module

• Apollo-Soyuz Test Project Craft

• A copy of the sphere-shaped Soviet pennant flown on Luna 2

• Piece of tile from the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster

• A flight-ready backup for Sputnik 1[8]

The Cosmosphere is unique among space museums in that it tells the history of the space program, rather than just being a collection of objects. It begins with the Germans (including Wernher von Braun) and the development of the V1 “buzz bombs” and V2 rockets during World War II and what (and who) went from Germany to the U.S. and Russia after WWII. The Cosmosphere has an actual (not flown) V2 rocket from the German ground-to-air missile system. 1000-pound warheads were carried by these rockets and during WWII the Allies managed to feed false information to the Germans causing them to aim some of them a few miles west of London so that they didn’t reach the more heavily populated parts of London. After WWII the Russians got the German’s rocket production lines and some of the scientists, but the U.S. got Wernher von Braun (who wanted to come to the U.S. along with his team) and train carloads of V2 rocket hardware and blueprints.

The first liquid-fueled rocket was built by Dr. Goddard in 1926. The first rocket-powered craft came in 1941. In 1942 German-built rockets reached speeds of 700 mph. (At that time, Allied rockets only hit 400 mph.) The

German ones probably broke the sound barrier although it was not officially recorded. Chuck Yeager officially broke the sound barrier in 1953.

The SR-71 Blackbird was developed by Kelly Johnson in the Skunkworks in 1960 (using slide rules!) and was first flown in 1962. It flew to an altitude over 90,000 feet. Craig visited Rich Graham in Dallas to take an SR-71 simulator test ride. The SR-71 was guided by a star light navigator and flew at speeds of Mach 3 plus, 2200 mph. The Blackbird’s internal systems were set to abort missions if they flew more than 600 feet off target—they tried to stay within 200 feet of target.

While the Russians were making advances in space in the late 1950’s, the U.S. Vanguard program was progressing much more slowly; one of the early Vanguard rockets launched in 1958 reached an altitude of only 4 ft. (One of the later ones that did successfully launch is still orbiting. It’s solar-powered and is the oldest manmade craft still orbiting.)

The Russian Luna II in Sept. 1959 landed on the moon and detonated.

The Russian Vostok was the first manned space capsule. A Vostok that flew unmanned is in the Cosmosphere. Soviet spacecraft did not have retro rockets or their own parachute landings; cosmonauts ejected from the capsule and then parachuted down from 17000 feet up.

The U.S. Project Mercury’s Atlas I launched in Nov. 1959.

The Cosmosphere also has:

The couch that Enos the chimp flew in space

Gene Cernan’s space suit from Gemini 9

The Apollo 11 gantry that provided entrance into the Apollo 11 spacecraft. Gunter Wendt was always the official on duty who oversaw their entry into their space capsule and he was always given gifts by the astronauts. On Apollo 11 one of the gifts was a freeze-dried “trophy trout” from Mike Collins.

Jim Lovell’s Apollo 13 spacesuit.

A Surveyor model and a Surveyor scoop recovered on the moon by astronauts on Apollo 12.

The LEM model the Cosmosphere has is a prototype with a round door—which was later changed to a square door to accommodate the backpacks worn on the lunar surface.