Hi, I'm Matthew Burchette, and welcome to a special Apollo 50th anniversary
edition of Behind the Wings. And we're in Wapakoneta, Ohio, which, as you all know,
Ohio is the birthplace of aviation. And some people say that it's even the mother
of astronauts, because the state of Ohio can claim 25 astronauts. That's pretty
impressive. Now, if we're talking about astronauts, why am I in front of this
really super cute little house? That's because this house was the boyhood home
of none other than Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon. The other
thing that's really interesting is that he used to work for NASA at the Glenn
Research Center, which, at the time, was called the Lewis Research Center.
That's just up the road in Cleveland, and there is a ton of information there that I
want to check out. So let's get going.
So we drove up from Wapakoneta, and now we're at the Glenn Research Center here
in Cleveland. And I've got John Oldham, who's the exhibit specialist here on
campus. Thank you so much, and I gotta say, I understand you're actually a fan of
Behind the Wings
Absolutely, love the show. Done a great job.
Got to get that plug in.
Great job, always.
You heard him here. He said we're doing a great job. So tell us a little bit about what
Glenn Research has done for the Apollo Program.
Sure. Well, firstly, the Glenn Research Center started
as the Lewis Research Center. It was an aero center
back in the 40s. We didn't become Glenn until 1999. That was in honor of John
Glenn, hometown guy. But, in the interim as Lewis Research Center, we were
faced with part of the big challenges of Apollo. One of the things Glenn had been,
or Lewis, had been working on, at the time, was hydrogen fuels. Basically, we had to
push a 363 foot tall, 7 million pound rocket and get it to 17,500 miles an
hour in less than 100 miles. So the fuel problem was solved by the folks at Lewis
with hard work, dedication, and they were the kind of spear point of
getting hydrogen under control that would later be used to enable us to do
some missions. So there were 16 missions that flew prior to manned missions to
the Moon that Glenn was involved with. Spacecraft like the Ranger spacecraft.
Rangers were lunar probes that were not not quite capable of soft landing. They
made hard landings. We'll leave it at that. On the Moon, they sent back some
very nice pictures on their way in and in addition to that, we had lunar orbiter
spacecraft that would stay in orbit around the Moon and provide great
photography and some data to help us kind of pick those spots where we would
put ourselves eventually on the Moon.
Alright John, you have a amazing set of toys, but this...
Yeah
Come on. This is the real deal.
Yeah, so what we have here is an Apollo A7L. It is the basic suit to go to the
Moon in. This particular suit belonged to William Anders, who was the command
module pilot for Apollo 8. It was not a flown suit. It was his flight spare.
You know, bolt for bolt and stitch for stitch identical in how they were made.
They were form-made for the astronaut. In this particular suit,
you could not sit down. There's no stitching in there to allow you. If you
remember Apollo 11, when Neil and Buzz landed, they were standing. When you
landed in a lunar module, you were not sitting in a chair. There was no chair in
the lunar module. So you couldn't even bend all the way, because it would
require things that would compromise the safety of the suit to the point where
they decided to delete that.
So on the helmet,
Yes
This does not look like the helmet that you see in all the photographs.
Sure, a lot of people believe that that big beautiful helmet with the gold visor
was the actual pressure helmet for the moon.
It wasn't. You have this pressure bubble that keeps this
astronaut breathing nice, breathable air. You don't want to take that out on
the Moon and take the chance of tripping and breaking it. If you had a hardhat, you
could put over that, which is what they had. They called the Apollo helmet the
LEVA, the Lunar Excursion Visor Assembly. And it was a hard hat that went over
this, and had a series of visors. That gold visor, it would lift so that
was over the top of this bubble. So you still required this.
Can I try that on?
Absolutely, sure. We can make that happen. So you'll want to tilt it back and then
back over your head, just like that. There you are.
I love it. I sound, like, really cool in here.
Besides this super awesome spacesuit, John had one more Apollo artifact to show me.
Let's do this. Let's dive in.
But, before we get to that, let's talk a little bit more about what's currently going on at Glenn.
As one of ten NASA research centers around the country,
Glenn is situated on 350 acres of land and contains more than 3,000 personnel.
And their primary purpose is to research, develop and test innovative technology
or aeronautics and spaceflight. Want an example? Check this place out.
This is the Simulated Lunar Operations Laboratory, also known as the
SLOPE lab. In here, scientists and engineers are trying to figure out a
better way for us to get around on other planetary surfaces, which explains the
giant sandbox in the center of the room. It also has a collection of pretty
unique tires. They have exact replicas of the tires used on the lunar rover, which
were surprisingly light, and the newer models will support much heavier lunar
and even Martian vehicles. Another lab doing interesting work is the Exercise
Countermeasures laboratory, which evaluates exercise devices that
astronauts are using in space. This lab simulates the zero gravity of space by
hanging test subjects from the ceiling and having them run on this vertical
treadmill. Unfortunately, I wasn't allowed to test it out, but I did get to try on
this super cool harness that was developed at Glenn and is used by the
astronauts in the International Space Station.
Ever been told it's not rocket science? Well, this lab is rocket science.
Specifically, it's the Electric Propulsion and Power lab, which, like the
name implies, tests electric propulsion. They're currently testing thrusters in
these huge vacuum chambers that will ionize xenon gas and make it into a
plasma that's thrust out the back of a spacecraft to propel it forward.
Like I said, rocket science. Back with John, because he's dying to show me something
and guess what? It's Apollo moon rocks.
So the first rock I want to show you is a rock from Apollo 15. So this rock has a name. It's name is
15058.192. The 192 is a section of that sample. So this rock was sectioned
off into multiple pieces, and and this piece was separated from those pieces.
So, keep in mind, picked up in the vacuum of space on the Moon and the only
atmosphere on Earth this rock has ever seen is nitrogen, we use nitrogen as an
inert gas to keep from reacting with any of the minerals in that rock.
And these pieces were sealed in this material called lucite. My mom used to
wax the kitchen floor with lucite floor wax.
Right. A similiar kind of material, but that's 50 years old.
It's been in that material for 50 years, so it's protecting
it and has not seen our atmosphere.
And this came from Apollo?
15
So, that is a Jim Irwin rock.
Oh wow.
Jim Irwin is the actual astronaut who picked up that rock.
Thanks, Jim.
The rock I'm going to show you now is quite different, and it was kind of
special, even among moon rocks.
So this is a sample from Apollo 16. This is lunar anorthosite. And an anorthosite represents
the older parts of the Moon that's 4.2 billion years old. And the biggest
surprise we found in these two samples, and consistently in all of the 842
pounds we brought back, 40 percent oxygen by weight. The Moon is full of oxygen.
Its mineral oxygen. it's going to require some work, it's going to take some
chemistry, it's going to take some physical and mechanical processes to do
that, but it's loaded with with oxygen.
We have seen some amazing things here on the Glenn Research Center's campus, but
now we are talking to Dr. Janet Kavandi, who flew on STS-91, 99 and 104.
Correct.
A full-fledged astronaut. Thank you so much for being here.
It's my pleasure.
So Glenn is one of ten research centers scattered throughout the country. What
percentage does Glenn play in this whole overall, kind of, push to get back to the Moon.
There are, you know, maybe four centers that really push the space side.
And that would be the Johnson Space Center, the Kennedy, the Marshall
and then we are probably next with less contributions to space flight.
Well, you guys are kind of important. You're doing propulsion.
Yeah, the propulsion part is kind of - so there's two kinds of propulsion, too.
There's chemical propulsion, so if you see the vehicles launch off the pad,
there's a lot of fire and stuff, right.
That's Marshall's specialty.
Okay.
And what we do is the electric propulsion system. So I believe you saw.
We saw that earlier which is reallly cool stuff.
Yeah, low thrust, but very, very energy efficient.
That is really cool. Now, on the space side of things, you've got Orion working.
We do.
The Gateway.
Yes.
And who knows what else.
A lot of stuff. So let's start with Orion, okay?
So with Orion, we have a new crew capsule that will go
back to the Moon. Under the capsule where the crew sits there's a module called
the service module, and the Glenn Research Center is responsible for that.
And it is actually manufactured in Europe, in Bremen, Germany, by Airbus.
And then they have shipped the first element to the Kennedy Space Center. It's being
integrated with the crew capsule, and then we will bring that whole integrated
stack here to the Plum Brook station in Sandusky, Ohio. And we will do vacuum
testing on that module in the world's largest vacuum chamber. So it's very
important to make sure that we test this vehicle properly to make sure it doesn't
have any flaws, so that when we put humans on it for the first time, it
will be safe for them to fly.
Do we have kind of a rough estimate of date when that might happen?
Yeah. The, well the the equipment will come here this fall and
test here, and then we will ship it back. And we should be able to fly by the end of 2020.
And that's the unmanned mission?
That's the unmanned mission.
Okay, and then between unmanned to manned will be...
Yeah, it will be a couple of years.
Okay.
Probably in between and, in this case, we want to put
humans on the Moon, but we're doing it to stay for longer periods of time
and we're going to do a lot more science, learn how to build habitats on
the Moon, how to protect ourselves from radiation, how to grow food on the
surface of the Moon and just be sustainable, because what we learned
there we can take and put on Mars, at the future date.
Talking with John, he showed us some moon rocks, and I asked him if I could have one,
and he so rudely said no.
But, since you run the joint, can I have a moon rock?
No, even if I were able to give you one,
I would not give you one. I can't have one.
That's right. You come first.
Alright, fair enough.
If you're a dr - you. Hold on.
The awesome drive from Wapakoneta to - say that fast
bruh, this is going to happen a lot. That's alright.
Am I allowed to do that too?
Oh absolutely! Trust me, trust me.