Monthly Archives: March 2012

Bringing Buzz Lightyear to the Museum

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When Disney•Pixar approached the National Air and Space Museum about donating the Buzz Lightyear figure that had flown to the International Space Station for 15 months, I was delighted.  As the curator for the Museum’s social and cultural space artifacts, I have the unique job of getting to take toys seriously.

 

Buzz Lightyear

Buzz Lightyear at the Launch Pad

Buzz Lightyear joined the pantheon of famous space characters when Toy Story burst onto the scene in 1995 as the first feature-length animated movie ever made.  But Toy Story did more than just innovate with new animation technology.  Its characters were so well-developed, sympathetic, and real that Toy Story earned an Oscar nomination for best original screenplay, recognition for its excellent story-telling.  In fact, John Lasseter, Pixar’s Chief Creative Officer, received a Special Achievement Academy Award for his leadership of the Toy Story team.

 

John Lasseter, chief creative officer at Pixar Animation Studios and creator of Buzz Lightyear; Lori Garver, NASA deputy administrator and Museum director Jack Dailey hold the space-flown Buzz Lightyear action figure.

Sending Buzz Lightyear into space combined the wide-spread appeal of John Lasseter’s beloved character with the educational inspiration of NASA.  NASA launched the very first “Toys in Space” program aboard the Space Shuttle mission STS 51-D in April 1985.  A second group of toys flew in 1993.  These efforts included simple toys — such as a yo-yo or a ball — that could be used to illustrate science lessons.  For the digital age, NASA and Disney∙Pixar used the flight of Buzz Lightyear not only for on-orbit demonstrations, but also to create online educational games and related worksheets using Buzz Lightyear to get students excited about learning.

Buzz did not simply fly into space tucked into a storage compartment.  While on orbit, NASA astronauts Greg Chamitoff and Mike Fincke conducted science lessons from space with help from Buzz Lightyear.  But Buzz also “had dinner” with the astronauts in the International Space Station.  And it turns out that even astronauts can’t resist playing with a toy!  Having Buzz Lightyear aboard provided some much-needed levity for a space crew whose time was closely scheduled to make the most of their precious time aloft.

When I talked to the people who worked out the agreement for NASA to send Buzz Lightyear to the International Space Station, I was told that the more that they worked together, the more the participants were struck by the similarities between NASA and Disney•Pixar.  Not only were they both large, complex organizations with important centers in central Florida, but also — on both sides of the table — they were people who were absolutely absorbed “by the love and passion of what they do.”  That’s something familiar to us here at the Smithsonian.  That excitement about their missions included a strong commitment to sharing what they did with the next generation.

And indeed, that’s why the National Air and Space Museum wanted to collect artifacts from this educational initiative.  Along with the flown Buzz Lightyear figure, this important donation includes the videos and educational materials produced by Disney and Pixar to inspire the next generation to get excited about science, technology, math, and the space program.  Given that John Lasseter — a pioneer in digital technologies — visited the Museum for the formal donation ceremony for these objects, it’s fitting that these important donations represent the first “born digital” artifacts coming into the collection of the National Air and Space Museum.

 

Buzz Lightyear

John Lasseter, chief creative officer at Pixar Animation Studios and creator of Buzz Lightyear, holds action figure donated to the Museum and points to where it will be on display in the "Moving Beyond Earth" Gallery in the summer of 2012.

The stories that they tell will fit well into a new Museum exhibit, Moving Beyond Earth, which illustrates the Space Shuttle program, the International Space Station, and future human spaceflight.  Pixar’s “Mission Logs” videos will be help educate children and families about rendezvous, re-entry, and space science.  And Buzz Lightyear himself will have a special place in the mockup of the space shuttle’s crew cabin that we’ve built in the exhibit.  Given that Buzz flew into space and back aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery, after which the exhibit’s crew compartment is modeled, we hope that he’ll feel right at home.

If you plan to visit the Museum this summer, make sure that you come down the hall to Moving Beyond Earth to say hello to Buzz!

Above: Archived webcast of the ceremonial presentation of Buzz Lightyear to the National Air and Space Museum. Chief creative officer of Pixar John Lasseter presented the action figure to the Museum and took questions from the audience.

Margaret A. Weitekamp is a curator in the Space History Division of the National Air and Space Museum.

The Ten Best American Aviation Genre Films of All Time: A Highly Personal and Idiosyncratic List

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test pilot

A Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer still photograph of Clark Gable, the star of "Test Pilot," a film directed by Victor Fleming in 1939.

I am sure that my selections for the ten best American aviation genre films will be hotly contested. First, let me clarify what I mean by “aviation genre.”  The aviation genre is defined by the manner in which an aviation film pays attention to characterization, values, actions, and iconography.  Broadly speaking, the genre is about professional pilots as masculine heroes, who band together in a tightly-knit community, and who do dangerous work. In large part they have little or no regard for life outside aviation, are somewhat misogynistic, and they are fatalistic about life. They wear pilot gear and their work is set in an environment surrounded by aircraft and the iconographic trappings of aircraft.

I contend that the most outstanding aviation genre films contain these elements, and that for my money, the most representative of them were made during the 1930s and 1940s, a time when aviation was a new and revolutionary technology. After that, the generic elements changed somewhat, in keeping with the times and shifting political and cultural conditions, but not enough to make the genre as exciting or relevant as it was during the Golden Age of aviation and throughout World War II. There are exceptions.

Some will no doubt be disappointed that I omitted foreign films—the excellent British film One of Our Aircraft is Missing (Michael Powell, 1942), or the equally fine Breaking the Sound Barrier (aka The Sound Barrier), directed by David Lean in 1952, for example. Or, that I excluded documentaries—William Wyler’s classic The Memphis Belle: A Story of a Flying Fortress from 1944 or Target For Tonight (Harry Watt, 1941), a British film about a Royal Air Force Bomber Command Vickers Wellington bomber and its crew.

Twelve O'clock High

A movie poster that advertises "Twelve O’Clock High," a 1949 film directed by Henry King for Twentieth Century Fox. Gregory Peck stars.

Also, some may be miffed that I didn’t consider aviation disaster movies like William Wellman’s The High and the Mighty (1954) or Airport (George Seaton, 1970) or even the cheeky spoof on aviation disasters, Airplane! (Jim Abrahams, David and Jerry Zucker, 1980). Other films like Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove, Or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Bomb is not really an aviation genre film or aviation film at all—it’s about nuclear holocaust. The excellent Flight of the Phoenix, directed by Robert Aldrich in 1965 (not the 2004 remake),  and starring James Stewart, is a movie about an airplane and the survival of its crew and passengers under impossible and even improbable conditions. And, although Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines, or How I Flew from London to Paris in 25 Hours 11 Minutes (Ken Annakin, 1965) is one of my personal favorites, it doesn’t conform to the generic formula. Although it does conform, Top Gun (1986) did not make the cut because while it has some of the finest flying scenes ever filmed, it is cliché-ridden and full of immature fantasy.

Finally, there are no television productions on the list; I was concerned primarily with feature films made in Hollywood that typically espouse American values and portray American notions of masculinity and courage—the “Right Stuff,” as Tom Wolfe characterizes it.

So, I offer for your consideration, the following in chronological order:

  1. Wings (1927)—Wings is the first true aviation epic film, and the advent of the aviation film genre. It was directed by William Wellman, and based on a story by John Monk Saunders, who won an Oscar for Best Writing, Original Story. The film stars Clara Bow, Charles “Buddy” Rogers, and Richard Arlen. It won an Oscar for Best Picture in 1929.
  2. The Dawn Patrol (1930)—Howard Hawks refined and redefined the aviation film genre with this examination of stoic men who face death in air combat during World War I. This version, which stars Richard Barthelmess and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., is rarely if ever seen on television and is not available in VHS or DVD. The more well-known 1938 version, directed by Edmund Goulding, which stars Errol Flynn, used footage from the original and keeps the exact story line.
  3. Test Pilot (1938)—Directed by Victor Fleming (Gone with the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, both 1939), this film stars Clark Gable, Myrna Loy, and Spencer Tracy. Test Pilot largely follows Hawks’s Dawn Patrol formula. The difference is that as the war in Europe approaches, the individualistic and often reckless test pilot-hero (Gable) reluctantly makes accommodations to the demands of his Air Corps compatriots and his family.
  4. Only Angels Have Wings (1939)—Howard Hawks’s classic tale of unsung mail pilots who face both love and death under difficult circumstances in a remote region of the Andes Mountains. This film stars Cary Grant, Jean Arthur, and Richard Barthelmess, with a bit part by Rita Hayworth.
  5. Air Force (1943)—Howard Hawks again, although this time the team represents the idealized values of aviation combat heroes in a much different context than the individualistic WWI aviators portrayed in The Dawn Patrol. Air Force hews to the preferred narrative for WWII Hollywood films; i.e., an ethnically diverse, self-sacrificing group that is honorable and working together towards an Allied victory.
  6. Twelve O’Clock High (1949)—Henry King’s poignant portrait of the Organization Man at war, starring Gregory Peck, Hugh Marlowe, and Gary Merrill.  In many ways, this film is a continuation of themes Hawks developed in The Dawn Patrol; i.e., group effort versus individualism, and the psychological and emotional price a leader must pay for sending men to their deaths.
  7. The Bridges at Toko-Ri (1954)—This film, adapted from James Michener’s novel of the same name, and directed by Mark Robson, examines the nature of combat pilot-hero bravery and its demands during the Korean War, an era in which the genre formula begins to break down. It stars William Holden, Grace Kelly, and Frederic March.
  8. The War Lover (1962)—Based on a novel by John Hersey, directed by Philip Leacock, and starring Steve McQueen and Robert Wagner, this film, along with The Bridges at Toko-Ri, marks the beginning of the break with the traditional master narrative of the combat pilot hero in the post-WWII era.
    9. the right stuff

    A Ladd Company still photograph of Sam Shepard as Charles E, “Chuck” Yeager, the legendary test pilot, in Philip Kaufman’s "The Right Stuff" (1983).

  9. The Blue Max (1966)—Directed by John Guillermin and starring George Peppard, James Mason, and Ursula Andress, this film revisioned the WWI aviation combat genre for the postmodern era. The Blue Max exposes the politics and nationalism behind the competition among combat pilots to become aces. In the days before computer graphics effects, The Blue Max contains some of the finest flying sequences ever put on film.
  10. The Right Stuff (1983)— Based on Tom Wolfe’s book  and directed by Philip Kaufman, this film stars Sam Shepard, Scott Glenn, Ed Harris, and Dennis Quaid. It is a brilliant and nostalgic tribute to test-pilot Chuck Yeager and the values of the pilot-hero in the post-heroic space age.

Fortunately most of these films are available in DVD, and in some cases, Blu-ray Disc format. Also, many of them have appeared on the Turner Classic Movies channel. All have synopses and some are reviewed in the TCM database.

Dom Pisano is a curator in the Aeronautics Division of the National Air and Space Museum.

Remembering Wernher von Braun on his 100th Birthday

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Today is the 100th anniversary of the birth of Wernher von Braun (March 23, 1912-June 16, 1977), one of the most famous rocketeers and advocates of spaceflight that ever lived. Accordingly, it is an appropriate time to reflect on his remarkable life and career. A longstanding “space cadet,” von Braun was an early member of the “Verein fur Raumschiffahrt” (Society for Spaceship Travel, or VfR). Although spaceflight aficionados and technicians had organized at other times and in other places, the VfR emerged soon after its founding on July 5, 1927 as a leading group that both advocated for spaceflight and worked to build rockets. Growing up in the VfR, Wernher von Braun became the quintessential and movingly eloquent advocate for the dream of spaceflight and a leading architect of its technical development.

 

Wernher von Braun

Photo of Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) Director Dr. Wernher von Braun at his desk with rocket models on his desk. Dr. von Braun served as Marshall's first director from 1960 until his transfer to NASA Headquarters in 1970.

He achieved a new stage for his efforts in 1932 when the German army hired the charismatic and politically astute Wernher von Braun, then only 20 years old, to work in its military rocket program. While he was the first VfR member to go to work for the German military, he was far from the last. Under his direction, of course, Nazi Germany developed the V-2 ballistic missile in the early 1940s.

Von Braun’s motivations for this move, with the hindsight of Hitler’s rise to power in Germany and the devastation and terror of World War II, have been questioned and criticized. Under von Braun’s technical direction, with political oversight provided by General Walter Dornberger, Germany developed the V‑2 rocket, the first true ballistic missile. The brainchild of Wernher von Braun’s rocket team operating at a secret laboratory at Peenemunde on the Baltic coast, this rocket was the immediate antecedent of many of those used in the U.S. space program. A liquid propellant missile rising 46 feet in height and weighing 27,000 pounds at launch, the V‑2, called the A-4 by the Germans involved in the project, flew at speeds in excess of 3,500 miles per hour and delivered a 2,200 pound warhead 500 miles away.

V-2

Two months before the Nazis came to power in 1933, physics student Wernher von Braun went to work on rocket weapons for the German army. Von Braun's establishment made a breakthrough to large-scale rocket engineering. It created the world's first operational ballistic missile: the V-2.

First flown in October 1942, it was employed against targets in Europe beginning in September 1944, and by the end of the war 1,155 had been fired against England and another 1,675 had been launched against Antwerp and other continental targets. The guidance system for these missiles was imperfect and many did not reach their targets, but they struck without warning and there was no defense against them. As a result the V-2s had a terror factor far beyond their capabilities.

With the V-2, on the morning of September 8, 1944, the world changed in ways that happen only rarely. After an enormous investment by Hitler’s Germany, more than a decade of research and development (R&D), the deaths of thousands of concentration camp laborers (with many more to come), and allied fears that led to an air strike on von Braun’s rocket R&D facility at Peenemünde, the V-2 changed the nature of warfare. After some false starts, at 8:40 a.m. on this date the first V-2 of the rocket campaign lifted off toward Paris. It exploded at high altitude and never reached the allied lines around Paris, an indication of the experimental nature of this complex new technology. Two hours later, however, a second rocket struck the Paris suburb of Charentonneau à Maison-Alfort, killing six people and injuring 36 others. All of them were non-combatants. This was the first ballistic missile attack in history, and it signaled a new age of warfare in which billions of dollars would be expended to strike enemies with missiles as well as to detect, deter, and defend against ballistic missiles.

Nazi Germany’s astounding success in developing a ballistic missile while the other combatants had not done so was no accident, and it was in no small measure the result of personalities involved in the research. Before 1941 the United States had led the world in rocket technology, chiefly because of the work of Robert H. Goddard. But he failed to gain the support of either other scientists or the U.S. government. On the other hand, the energetic von Braun courted his scientific colleagues and those in the German government. No similar level of salesmanship took place in any other nation. Popular and top-level support was therefore lacking, and von Braun was able to capitalize on this with its V-2 development during the war.

Advocates of spaceflight have tended to lionize individuals associated with this effort, not so much because of the V-2’s rather negative history as a potential weapon of mass destruction but because of what it meant for space exploration in the 1950s and 1960s. This has prompted a celebration of the von Braun’s team’s role in the development of American rocketry and space exploration even as it minimized the wartime cooperation of von Braun and his “rocket team” with the Nazi regime in Germany. Both have been distortions of the historical record. Even today, few Americans realize that von Braun had been a member of the Nazi party and an officer in the SS and that the V-2 was constructed using forced labor from concentration camps who were worked to death. The result has been both a whitewashing of the less savory aspects of the careers of the German rocketeers and an overemphasis on their influence in American rocketry.

explorer

Dr. William H. Pickering, Dr. James A. Van Allen, and Dr. Wernher von Braun (left to right) hoist a model of Explorer I and the final stage after the launching on Jan. 31, 1958. Explorer I, the first U.S. earth satellite was launched by a Jupiter-C with U.S. earth - IGY scientific experiments of Dr. James A. Van Allen, which discovered the radiation belt around the earth.

Wernher von Braun was a stunningly successful advocate for space exploration and has appropriately been celebrated for those efforts. But because he was also willing to build a ballistic missile for Hitler’s Germany, with all of connotations that implied in the devastation and terror of World War II, many of his ideals have also been appropriately questioned. For some he was a visionary who foresaw the potential of human spaceflight, but for others he was little more than an arms merchant who developed brutal weapons of mass destruction. In reality, he seems to have been something of both. In the 1960s, as the United States was involved in a race with Soviet Union to see who could land a human on the Moon first, political humorist Tom Lehrer wrote a song about von Braun‘s pragmatic approach to serving whoever would let him build rockets regardless of their purpose. “Don’t say that he’s hypocritical, say rather that he’s apolitical,” Lehrer wrote. “‘Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That’s not my department,’ says Wernher von Braun.” Lehrer’s biting satire captured well the von Braun’s divided legacy.

Roger Launius is a senior curator in the Space History Division of the National Air and Space Museum.

 

 

Vought Aircraft Heritage Foundation Retirees Finish Vought V-173 “Flying Pancake” Following 8-Year Restoration Effort

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Flying Pancake

Vought V-173 "Flying Pancake" (Jay Miller photo).

On February 10, 2012, retired Vought employees officially rolled out the one-of-a-kind Vought V-173 Flying Pancake, following eight years of painstaking restoration work.  The Flying Pancake dates to World War II when the Chance Vought Division of the United Aircraft Corporation built and flew the airplane to test Charles H. Zimmerman’s theories about extremely low-aspect ratio wing design that allowed an aircraft to fly at very slow speeds.  Among the airplane’s novel features are the two large wooden prop-rotors powered by a pair of 80 HP Continental A-80 engines.  More of the history and additional technical details about the Flying Pancake are available in the curatorial web essay.

Vought retirees moved the aircraft to Dallas, Texas, in 2004 for restoration.  Early next month, the retirees will move the Flying Pancake to the Frontiers of Flight Museum at Love Field near Dallas and the museum will unveil the airplane to visitors on April 15.  The National Air and Space Museum accepted the aircraft from the U. S. Navy Bureau of Weapons in September 1960 because the design approach to low-speed flight represented by the Flying Pancake was so unusual.  The aircraft will remain on loan from our Museum to the Frontiers of Flight Museum for at least ten years.  It is one of almost 30 Museum aircraft on loan throughout the United States.

 

Flying Pancake

To maintain wing lift at the slowest speed possible, Vought mounted large prop-rotors at the wing tips, and designed the left prop-rotor to turn counter-clockwise (as viewed by the pilot) and the right prop-rotor to turn clockwise (Jay Miller photo).

 

cockpit

Vought V-173 "Flying Pancake" Cockpit (Jay Miller photo).

Vought retirees carefully cleaned the cockpit, stuffed a new seat cushion with the kapok that had spilled from the original, and replaced three missing instruments but otherwise, they left the area untouched.  The retirees carefully preserved original wear marks seen on the trim wheel left of the seat, the two rudder pedals shaped like stirrups, and various struts and braces.  Vought test pilots Boone Guyton and Richard Burroughs, transatlantic flyer Charles A. Lindbergh, and other pilots made these marks while test-flying the V-173 during test flights totaling 131 hours in the air.

 

Russ Lee is a curator in the Aeronautics Division of the National Air and Space Museum.

The Untold Story of Getting from Here to There

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I work behind the scenes as part of a team of museum specialists supporting the upcoming exhibit Time and Navigation: The Untold Story of Getting from Here to There opening in March, 2013. I am the person who shepherds the objects themselves through the process. I photograph them, take their measurements, build specialized containers for them, bring them to their appointments and generally hover over them like a nanny to her charges.  Yes, indeed, they have appointments — with the exhibit designer, the conservator, and mount maker — all of whom play a big role in getting them ready for their big day when the exhibit opens.   Spending as much time with them as I do, I have learned a few of their secrets and I would like to share some of them with you.

 

Hemispherical Resonator

Hemispherical Resonator. Photo by Ben Sullivan and Charles Gosse.

 

The tiniest object in the exhibit – not much bigger than a dime – is this part of a Hemispherical Resonator shown above in a series of three snapshots.  Plato said that “all science begins with astonishment;” so it is for the child who gazes upon a ringing wine glass resting on a dinner table.  Haven’t we all run a wet finger along the rim of a wine glass to make it sing?  I know I have.  You may never have thought about this, but every material has a frequency at which it vibrates or “resonates.” The Hemispherical Resonator sings in much the same way as a wine glass. Onboard a space vehicle, a Hemispherical Resonator assists with extremely fine positioning.  And of course, in space no one tells the Resonator to cut it out.  While its form is meant to be purely functional, when we photographed it our studio lights passed through it and revealed an elegance as compelling as any object of art.

This LORAN-C or long-range navigation unit for general aviation aircraft, was the first of its kind in 1980.  What we didn’t realize until we looked closer was that the engineers, scientists, and technicians who designed it actually signed their work.  How cool is that?

 

LORAN-C

Long Range Navigation (LORAN) Unit. Photo by Charles Gosse and Ben Sullivan.

 

This is the compass which was onboard Winnie Mae when Wiley Post flew solo around the world.  The damage to the glass (a separate piece from the main unit, itself) is from a crash on takeoff on August 15, 1935 near Point Barrow, Alaska.  We needed to know what the fluid was inside the compass but we could not open the sealed unit.  After some careful research, I discovered that the company which made the compass was still in business and got in touch with them and gave them its serial number.  They looked it up in their old company registers (extract below), found its manufacture date, and told us that the fluid was either alcohol or mineral spirits as well as the date it was made and for whom.

 

compass

Aperiodic Compass

 

R.S. Ritchie Company log records

R.S. Ritchie Company log records. Photo courtesy of Steve Sprole

 

This model of a Dornier Super Wal flying boat is made of nickel over brass.  Beautiful at a distance, we discovered just how beautiful it is up close, as well, where the detail is extraordinary, both externally as well as inside where gangways, seats, and tables are lovingly reproduced.  A tiny metal plate was attached to the co-pilot’s seat at some point with the name of the craftsman who had made needed repairs to the model.

 

Model of a Dornier Super Wal Flying Boat

Model of a Dornier Super Wal Flying Boat. Photo by Charles Gosse

 

These are just some of the stories behind these beautiful and important objects, which will appear in the upcoming Time and Navigation exhibit opening in March, 2013.

Charles Gosse is a part of the team behind Time and Navigation: The Untold Story of Getting from Here to There coming March, 2013 to the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC