Monthly Archives: June 2009

X-Ray Analysis of the Starship Enterprise

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When the National Air and Space Museum opened in 1976, the production model of the Starship Enterprise was prominently and dramatically displayed hanging at the entrance of “Life in the Universe” gallery.

Later, when that gallery closed, and the starship was moved to several other locations within the museum.

Star

Star Trek Starship "Enterprise" Model on display in "Life In The Universe" gallery.

  

Star Trek Starship "Enterprise" Model on display in Flight and the Arts gallery.

Star Trek Starship "Enterprise" Model as it appeared in "Rocketry and Spaceflight" gallery.

Though these were dramatic displays, hanging the starship from the ceiling was not entirely favorable.  It had to be hung well above viewer’s heads, safely out of the reach of curious hands. From there, it could only be seen from below, which did not offer the best viewing, certainly not for loyal fans. In addition, hanging the starship left it at the mercy of accumulating dust and grime – a very serious issue in museums.

In fact, the starship had not been built to be hung. When filmed for the television series Star Trek, it rested upon a stand.  This stand, only 17 and a half high inches and ten and a quarter inches wide, seems scarcely substantial enough to support the eleven foot by five foot starship.

The original stand used during filming of the "Star Trek" television series.

By 1999, the starship had been hung, frequently moved, and re-hung for close to a quarter of a century. Museum staff responsible for caring for the starship determined that a close examination of the structure was required. Maryland QC Laboratories (MQC Labs, Inc.) at Aberdeen, Maryland, were contracted to do an X-Ray analysis of the starship, with special emphasis on possible stress at the attachment points, where the cables from which the starship was suspended were attached to the ship itself.

X-Ray Photograph from Saucer to Pylon Top

X-Ray Photograph from Saucer to Pylon Top

Port Nacelle, Top

X-Ray Photograph of Port Nacelle Top

X-Ray photograph of Hull, Starship Enterprise Model.

A composite of four X-Ray photographs showing the hull of the original Starship

After considerable discussion, museum staff decided not to hang the starship any more. Instead, a special case was built for it, and it now rests upon two stanchions specially built to hold it. The case protects the ship from dust, grime and fingerprints, while at the same time, presents the model at eye-level, so that the serious (and the merely curious) viewer can study it closely, and from all sides. Alongside the starship is the original stand it rested on, when filmed for the television show.

Starship "Enterprise" on display in the Museum Store.

Gregory K. H. Bryant is Museum Registrar in the Office of the Registrar at the Smithsonian, National Air and Space Museum.

To see the “Enterprise” Model on display, visit the lower level of the National Air and Space Museum Store at the National Mall Building in Washington, DC.

Insect Power

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The smallest model airplanes in the Museum collection, displayed here with inactive power sources. Smithsonian, National Air and Space Museum. Photograph by Eric Long.

When a colleague of ours, the curator of the model airplane collection, Tom Dietz, passed away recently, I was reminded of the time I spoke with him about two of the Museum’s model airplanes that I find most intriguing.

Designed and built by famed aircraft modeler Frank Ehling in the 1970s, they are the smallest flying models the Museum owns. But more unusual than their size is that they are powered by flies – yes, you heard right, houseflies, the insect. Constructed from balsa wood and red tissue paper, the one-fly design has a wingspan of two inches, and the two-fly version, which features a delta-wing design, is four inches wide. In both cases, contact cement was used to attach the live powerplant to the fuselage.

The Washington Post’s 2001 obituary of Ehling described the procedure for procuring the flies: “…Ehling honed an effective technique involving cupping a fly with his hands and then hurling it to the ground to knock it unconscious. He would then dab glue on its rear end, carefully avoiding its delicate wings, and attach the fly to the plane. He also was known to capture the fly, stick it in the freezer and glue it to the wood while it was immobile from the cold.

“Either way — as the fly gained consciousness or returned to room temperature — the winged insect would lift the model plane into the air.”

Theoretically, when the fly tired from its effort to stay airborne with the additional weight and drag of the airplane, the model would then glide to the ground.

The insect-powered airplanes are not currently on public display.

Maybe you would like to build an airplane piloted by a fly. Many kits (flies not included) are available online and you can find them by googling “fly-powered airplane.”

To learn more about the Museum’s unparalleled model aircraft collection, check out the book, On Miniature Wings: Model Aircraft of the National Air and Space Museum, by Thomas J. Dietz, with photographs by Eric Long.

Kathleen Hanser is a Writer-Editor in the Office of Communications at the National Air and Space Museum.

The Donor Making The Difference: The Eagle Is Being Restored

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Even in their retirement at the National Air and Space Museum, the Apollo-era artifacts lead busy lives and are counted amongst the Museum’s most popular objects, as Gar Schulin can attest to. Throughout his life, Gar has put on many “helmets” at the Museum, having been a docent, researcher, and now, a supporter as he contributes to the restoration of the Lunar Module 2’s descent stage.

Gar Schulin became one of the National Air and Space Museum’s youngest docents at the age of 15.  Needless to say, Gar wasn’t your average teenager in the 1970s – he grew up with the Space Age and studied many NASA technical publications; even Apollo Training Manuals received from Engineers who had worked in the program.

“I do not recall anyone else near my age giving tours or being turned loose to meet and greet the general public, ” he recalls, “ but it was a joy for me to share my enthusiasm with citizens from across the world, and turn their casual museum visits into a thrilling learning experience.”

Being a young, enthusiastic docent had its perks – such as stick-and-rudder flight training in an employee’s World War II PT-17 trainer, or befriending the legendary Paul Garber and listening to his firsthand accounts of the Wright brothers. Gar could certainly appreciate the good fortune of knowing men who witnessed flights by Orville Wright and men who flew the first Apollo lunar landing mission.

Gar’s work for the National Air and Space Museum didn’t stop on the museum floor.  He later mapped lunar geology as a Research Assistant in the Museum’s Center for Earth and Planetary Studies,  assisting Dr. Farouk El-Baz, the distinguished geologist who trained the Apollo astronauts in the art of visual and geologic interpretation from lunar orbit.

Today, Gar continues his involvement with the Museum through his financial support of the Apollo Lunar Module 2’s restoration, adding his story and perspective to its history.  The LM-2, a cousin of the Lunar Module 5 “Eagle” that touched down on the Moon during Apollo 11, was built for an unmanned earth-orbit test flight, a flight deemed unnecessary after the great success of Apollo 5.

These days, the descent stage of the LM-2 is dressed to resemble the Eagle during those first historic moments, complete with two astronaut mannequins beginning their lunar walk.   And while the aluminized plastic film wrapped around the LM-2’s descent stage may be fit to withstand space exploration, the rigors of museum exhibition over the last 30 years have resulted in its deterioration.

Gar Schulin lends a hand to the LM-2 restoration.

In offering his support, Gar recognizes the LM-2 as “an important icon, not only representing one of America’s greatest engineering and scientific achievements; it remains a tribute to the extraordinary efforts of over 400,000 engineers, technicians and scientists who made the promise of Project Apollo possible.”

Now, on the eve of the 40th Anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing, Gar and his wife Kathryn are proud to help refurbish the LM-2, so that all Museum visitors can experience this “giant leap for mankind” as if it were July 20th, 1969.

Carolyn Stewart is a Development Associate in the Office of Development at the National Air and Space Museum.

What We're Working on in the Restoration Shop (Part 2)

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In addition to the high-priority Barron Hilton Pioneers of Flight aircraft being refurbished at the Garber Facility (described previously), we have a number of other projects progressing at a slower pace:

The item to notice in this picture is not the engine, but the stand behind it. Volunteer Maurice Goodwin is working on a long-term project to build sturdy engine stands that can be rolled into position in a work area or stacked on heavy-duty shelving. The expensive casters are set into sockets and are reusable on any of our many stands. And, since some readers will want to know, the engine is an experimental Continental XR-1740-2 sleeve-valve radial engine, 875 HP, built in 1941 but never flown.

Volunteer Bill Pellegrino is fitting new copper-colored Kapton outer layers to the ATS-6 Earth viewing module. The welding shop added extensions to the stand to provide access to the bottom of the satellite – notice Bill’s wheeled work seat underneath.

Forerunner of today’s ultralight and light sport aircraft, this Curtiss-Wright CW-1 Junior is being restored by a team of volunteers headed by Joe Fichera, a retired Museum restoration specialist. The fuselage is nearly complete; current work is focused on the wings and wing struts (not shown). The wings will attach above the cockpits, just below the silvery fuel tank, with engine and pusher prop behind them.

The Junior’s engine, a three-cylinder Szekely. The Szekelys had the unfortunate habit of occasionally blowing cylinders completely off the engine while in flight, due to bolt or cylinder base failures. This one has the factory-installed “fix”; straps running between the cylinder heads to hold the cylinders on.

This immense one-piece wing from the Heinkel He-219 occupies the center of the shop. Visitors to the Udvar-Hazy Center can see the fuselage, one engine, and other components already on display. The exhibit designers assure us that the airplane will still fit in its gallery when assembled, but it’s going to be a tight fit.


At present, this Daimler-Benz DB 603 Aa engine is getting most of the attention on the He-219 project. It needs just a little more assembly, and then it’ll be ready for the cowling. Note that the stand is designed to hold the engine either horizontally or vertically. How do you rotate a 3000-pound engine?


It helps if you have two forklifts and a lot of practice. Here, Jeff Mercer (foreground) and Rob Mawhinney (behind the engine) make it look easy.

Anne McCombs is a restoration specialist in the Collections Division of the National Air and Space Museum.

Don't Know What a Slide Rule is For

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That’s a line from the song, “Wonderful World,” sung by Sam Cooke back in the 1960s. Forty years later, it turns out that Sam Cooke was not alone: very few people know about slide rules. At Space Day, held at the National Air and Space Museum last May, I had lots of fun standing in front of the Apollo 11 Command Module, explaining to visitors that, indeed, it and the rest of the Apollo-Saturn hardware were designed by engineers who relied on slide rules for calculations.
Paul Ceruzzi demonstrates the use of a slide rule to Museum visitors.

Paul Ceruzzi demonstrates the use of a slide rule to Museum visitors.

Of course the designers also used digital computers, but in the 1960s computers were giant machines that you programmed with punched cards, and they were strictly reserved for only the most complex mathematical calculations. As the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission approaches, we are constantly reminded of how incredible that voyage was. Add to the incredulity the slide rule: the basic mathematical tool that helped get the astronauts to the moon and back.

The visitors who gathered around the Command Module on Space Day generally fell into two camps. Older visitors told me that they used a slide rule in school but hadn’t seen one in years, and they had completely forgotten how it worked. The younger visitors (i.e., those under 40!) had never seen one before, although a few had heard of them. I belong to the former group, having once been quite proficient while in high school. For this presentation, I got out the manual and taught myself all over again how to use it. It was not easy.

The National Air and Space Museum has preserved a few slide rules, including one carried by Apollo 13 astronauts on their April 1970 journey. The Museum also has on display the slide rule owned by Wernher von Braun, who headed the Marshall Spaceflight Center in Huntsville, Alabama during the Apollo era. It shows signs of heavy use. One other favorite of mine is the “Space Vehicle Pocket Designer,” a specialized circular rule that computes spacecraft payload and range, based on fuels and rocket engine efficiency. It was given to me by a mathematician who had just retired from a northern Virginia technology firm. When he gave it to me, the retiree said, “Congratulations, Paul, you are now officially a rocket scientist!” If only it were that easy.

Apollo astronauts carried slide rules, but by the time of the last mission to the Moon in 1972, the pocket calculator had been invented. On the Apollo-Soyuz mission in 1975, the last to use Apollo hardware, the crew carried a Hewlett-Packard pocket calculator that had more power than the on-board Apollo Guidance computer.

Paul Ceruzzi is a curator specializing in aerospace computing and electronics in the Division of Space History at the National Air and Space Museum.