Category Archives: Exhibitions

Shiny Delivery this Holiday Season for the Time and Navigation Exhibition

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NTS-2

NTS-2 Satellite

Preparation of the upcoming Time and Navigation exhibition is in full swing, and objects are being installed in cases throughout the gallery.  In fact, the gallery became a little more shiny just in time for the holiday season thanks to a delivery from our friends at the Naval Research Laboratory. The object they contributed is a restored engineering model of the NTS-2 satellite. Now, you may be asking, “What is an NTS-2 satellite, besides a shiny box?”  Well, the NTS-2 satellite led a revolution in navigation technology, and can be considered the grandfather of all the satellites which currently help you find your way around town.

The NTS-2 satellite is the descendent of a naval research program known as TIMATION (TIMe/navigATION). The program began in the early 1960s, and tested the possibility of launching highly accurate clocks into space within satellites. The clocks on board the NTS-2 satellite worked by measuring the “tick” of cesium atoms. The cesium atoms vibrated more than nine billion times per second, acting like a super accurate clock. These clocks could then broadcast that time from space, and people on Earth could receive these signals to help them locate themselves on the planet. In 1973, the TIMATION program was combined with other military programs to form the NAVSTAR Global Positioning System (GPS). After successfully launching the NTS-1 satellite in the summer of 1974, NTS-2 was launched on June 23, 1977, forever changing how we navigate on Earth. The two satellites demonstrated the feasibility of using super accurate atomic clocks aboard satellites, and became the basis of the GPS network that your smartphone may use on a daily basis.

The restored engineering model looks very much like the one that went into space on that historic day in 1977. The Naval Research Laboratory did a great job restoring it and installing it in the gallery. We hope you will come and visit it when the exhibition opens in March of 2013!

Tom Paone is a museum specialist in the Aeronautics Division of the National Air and Space Museum.

Stanley Moves In

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On October 24, Stanley, winner of a historic robot race, left its home at the National Museum of American History aboard a flatbed truck and arrived safely at its destination, just seven blocks away. For the foreseeable future, Stanley will be here at the National Air and Space Museum, a centerpiece in the exhibition Time and Navigation:  The Untold Story of Getting From Here to There.

The irony of the situation escaped no one.  Stanley, a driverless vehicle that had navigated 132 miles on its own to win the 2005 Defense Advanced Research Projects Grand Challenge, needed the help of scores of people AND a truck ride to get from there to here.

Stanley

Stanley hitches a ride to the National Air and Space Museum. Photo by Richard Strauss

Frankly, moving Stanley is nerve-racking for me. I collected Stanley for the American History Museum’s robot collection.  I feel responsible for Stanley’s safety and the safety of everyone involved with wrangling such a big, heavy car.  On moving day, it turned out, there really was no cause for worry. Everybody—American History’s experienced vehicle mover Shari Stout, the skilled riggers from Ely, and the welcoming Air and Space staffers—everybody knew exactly what to do to put Stanley in just the right spot for long-term display.

Now that Stanley is securely in place, though, there’s a moment to reflect.  It’s worth thinking more deeply about the car’s place in Time and Navigation and the reasons for collecting contemporary objects for the Smithsonian in the first place.

Some have already wondered:  what’s a car doing in the National Air and Space Museum?  In Time and Navigation, we link Stanley directly to satellite navigation, a subject clearly within the Museum’s scope.  The car’s ability to drive itself is a new application for satellite navigation, made possible when computers combine GPS (global positioning system) coordinates with other kinds of data to construct an image of the road ahead, complete with obstacles.  And there’s another connection:  Stanley operates on the ground in much the same way that UAVs, that’s Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, operate in the air.  Stanley moved into the Museum right under the UAV exhibition on the west end.

stanley

Stanley moves into the National Air and Space Museum. Photo by Mark Avino

When Stanley won the off-road DARPA race in 2005, the achievement was a giant technical step forward for autonomous vehicles, the vehicles like Stanley that drive themselves.   Now, seven short years later, numerous carmakers and Google are testing self-driving cars.  Three states—Nevada, Florida, and California—have passed legislation permitting them on state roads.  Advocates foresee a future where such cars will relieve congestion on highways, reduce traffic accidents, and provide transportation for those who otherwise cannot or do not want to drive.  No point going to the showroom to shop for your robot car just yet, but insiders predict the technology will be commercially available soon.

License Plate

Nevada license plate issued for testing autonomous vehicles on the state’s public roads. Photo by Wayne Wakefield.

Predicting the future, like moving Stanley, makes me nervous. My training and interests make me passionate about the past. I’m a historian and a curator, not a soothsayer. Making decisions about what to collect from the long-ago past, a curator stands on pretty solid ground. Often there’s a body of existing research and documentation that verifies the importance of an object from long ago. That’s collecting from inside a comfort zone.

But collecting contemporary objects like Stanley comes close to predicting the future.  It’s a risky business.  Curators have to make educated guesses that today’s technical innovation will be tomorrow’s historic milestone.  Curators who do contemporary collecting take the risk that an object making headlines today will remain representative of some important event or illustrative of how Americans absorbs new technologies.  Such an object might even carry material evidence that inspires our successors to dig deeper into research we haven’t even imagined yet.  Or maybe collecting such an object won’t have any of those useful outcomes.  Maybe it will simply lie fallow forever after in storage.  As I say, it’s a risky business.

An important indicator of an object’s historical worth is whether it yields rich  insights.  So far Stanley does not disappoint.  On display at the National Museum of American History, Stanley represented the latest in a long line of wheeled robots, a history that can be traced back to renaissance automatons.  At the Air and Space Museum, Stanley’s technologies let us see inside the “black box” of navigation and consider emerging technologies that are likely to change the ways we get from here to there.  Whether there will be more insights down the road, we’ll just have to wait and see.

Carlene Stephens is a curator at the National Museum of American History in Washington, DC. She is currently working with a team of curators, designers and restoration specialists at the National Air and Space Museum to develop the Time and Navigation exhibition.

For more about Stanley’s recent move, see the Smithsonian blog.

 

Are You Sure You Want to Donate This?

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“Are you sure you want to donate this?” I asked the intern. “This” was a slightly-used Smartphone, in perfect working condition. The intern, Rebecca Bacheller, was, indeed, willing to donate it. She heard that the Time and Navigation team wanted to disassemble one and showcase the current state of geolocation devices, enabled by the Global Positioning System and other advanced electronics. Our plan was to label the phone’s circuits, and show how they correspond to classical methods of navigation that had been practiced for centuries. Becky was excited that she would be credited in the label; she also had another motive: namely a reason to trade up to the newest version of the popular phone. (This is a never-ending treadmill: once you get on, it is impossible to get off.)

I prepared myself for the transfer by going on-line and special-ordering tools to disassemble it: a “pentalobe” screwdriver, a plastic pry-bar, and a tiny Phillips-head screwdriver. I also downloaded instructions on how to disassemble the phone, and I borrowed a head-mounted magnifier. When the day arrived, fellow curator Andy Johnston and I got to work, surrounded by a few sidewalk superintendants from the Space History Division.

USS Alabama

The USS Alabama was launched in 1984, carried up to 24 Trident ballistic missiles armed with nuclear warheads, and is still in the fleet.

Before describing what we found, I want to mention an important part of the new gallery. One of the centerpieces of Time and Navigation is a “SINS” guidance system, removed from the nuclear-powered submarine USS Alabama. “SINS” stands for “Submarine Inertial Navigation System,” and it was responsible for telling the sub where it was without having to surface to take a fix on stars or otherwise reveal its location. Hence the “inertial” components: a set of gyroscopes and accelerometers that, as its developer Charles Stark Draper called it, was like practicing “astronomy in a closet.”  It was not perfect: the gyros had a tendency to drift, so periodically the sub would come near the surface to receive navigation signals from a Transit satellite orbiting overhead.  (An engineering backup of a Transit will also be on display in the gallery.)  A refrigerator-sized digital computer combined data from these inputs, corrected the gyros’ drift, and computed the sub’s position. The whole ensemble is rather bulky and heavy, and as Heidi Eitel mentioned in an earlier blog post, getting everything to fit in the gallery is quite a challenge.

SINS Typewriter

This modified IBM Selectric typewriter, connected to a special computer system, output data about the operation of two SINS (Submarine Inertial Navigation System) units aboard the nuclear-powered submarine USS Alabama. It could also provide input to the computer in emergencies.

So what does this have to do with the cell phone? As we disassembled it, Andy and I realized that almost every component of the SINS was present, even if you need a high-power magnifier to see it. A three-axis accelerometer? Check.  Gyroscopes? Yes. A radio to receive satellite navigation signals? Yes, although the phone receives signals from GPS, not Transit satellites. A computer? Of course—the phone uses an “A4” processor supplied by the company ARM. It has more processing power than the CRAY-1 that used to be on display in the Beyond the Limits gallery. A keyboard and display to give and receive commands? Yes–the phone’s touch screen even replicates the old-fashioned “QWERTY” keyboard of the electric typewriter used on the submarine. A radio to communicate with the rest of the world?  The phone has several, covering the major cellular frequencies in the UHF region. (The sub communicated by trailing a long wire behind it and receiving “Very-Low-Frequency” (VLF) radio signals—far below the standard AM broadcast band– chosen because they could penetrate water.)  The Smartphone even has a magnetic compass.

Smartphone

This disassembled smartphone showcases the current state of geolocation devices (as of 2012), enabled by the Global Positioning System and other advanced electronics. The phone’s circuits correspond to classical methods of navigation that have been practiced for centuries.

The difference in size between the two systems is breathtaking, but there is another difference that may be even more significant. The SINS was designed to allow the submarine to navigate without anyone, other than the crew, knowing where it was. By contrast, a Smartphone has all kinds of circuits and software on board to let the world know where its owner is, and what he or she is doing. Submariners might be uncomfortable carrying one of these around.

It is going to be a challenge to show this disassembled object to our visitors and convey the magnitude of what they are looking at. Many visitors carry these devices with them and hardly give them a second thought. The gallery opens next spring, and we’ll see how this exhibit works.

Paul Ceruzzi is chair of the Space History Division at the National Air and Space Museum.

Let’s just hope it fits…

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It takes a lot of people and effort to bring an exhibition from idea to reality. By the time I joined the exhibition team, Time and Navigation had been in development for over five years. The exhibit script was already written; the artifacts and images for display were already selected; the major features of the gallery were already imagined; the video content and interactive elements were identified. My mission as the exhibit designer was fairly simple and straight-forward: to transform the team’s words and ideas into a plan for a meaningful and accessible exhibition made of materials and space. There was only one problem—trying to make it all fit.

 

Exhibit Concept

Early Concept Sketch of the Submarine and Transit Satellite.

 

Here is a summary of the exhibit elements as they existed when I joined the team:

  1. 226 pages of exhibit text
  2. 7 major thematic sections containing 23 subunits
  3. Nearly 200 artifacts ranging in length from 1 inch (a chip-scale atomic clock) to 36 feet (a small airplane)
  4. 5 immersive environments
  5. 16 videos
  6. 13 interactive exhibits

 

And herein lies the problem: The gallery that will house all these elements is only 5,000 square feet. While this may seem like a lot, this space starts to look a lot smaller once you put an airplane, a car, and three satellites into it. Once these major artifacts are accounted for, there are still immersive environments to build that set the exhibition stage: the aft portion of a circa 1830 ship, part of a Cold War era submarine, a Quonset hut. And these only represent the primary experiences in 7 of the 23 content units, so there is a lot more stuff that still needs to fit.

Ordinarily, a design problem of this nature would demand a highly creative process—thinking outside the box, so to speak. But in this case, I embraced a different approach. I embarked on the year-and-a-half long phase of my design career that I now refer to as “Thinking Inside the Box.”

 

Exhibit Sketch

Section thru Gallery showing ship, Winnie Mae, Stanley the car, and Mariner 10

 

You see, most of the remaining objects for display are what can be classified as “black boxes.” To the curators and other people who know a thing or two about time and navigation, these boxes represent important moments in history or important developments in technology or have some other remarkable significance. But to me, the designer, they are the giant beige box, the small brown box, the gigantic tube of tin foil, or the cute little army green inner-tube robot that looks like a cartoon character.

It is my job to present these objects beautifully and lovingly so visitors can see them as the curators do. So I design attractive glass boxes (display cases) to house them and accommodate their various and particular needs (climate, security, light levels, etc.) Each “black box,” whether a cube, cylinder, or more complex shape, has to be measured and drawn and placed in a case layout with its associated label and sit on its own special piece of furniture (its mount). We test each case layout by gathering all the objects and labels for the case and placing them in their theoretical locations in their imaginary glass box. I modify the display case size and design as needed and then move on to the next case design. Meanwhile, our cabinet makers, mount makers, graphic designers, and graphic producers start making the components that we hope will all come together perfectly in the gallery when we start installing objects in the cases this winter.

 

Exhibit Summary

Exhibit Summary Plan


This methodology works great, except when it doesn’t. You see, not all the objects are currently in our collection. For example, we have plans to display the NIST-7, a 10′-6″ atomic clock that just arrived from Boulder, Colorado. This “black box” is actually a long, shiny, metallic cylinder mounted on a long rectangular box that at some point in its history lost its covering. I have not been able to personally verify the object’s dimensions because it is just being uncrated today. Even though the folks from the National Institute of Standards and Timekeeping did provide me with measurements, the most basic rule of exhibit design is VERIFY ALL DIMENSIONS! However, we could not wait to have all the objects in hand before completing the design and commencing the year-long construction process. So I went ahead and designed the NIST-7 display case (and several others), which was built and placed in the gallery a month ago. The case is 11′-6″ long, 5′-10″ tall, and 2′ deep—definitely large enough to display several humans, and hopefully a perfect fit for the NIST-7. I will know for certain very soon.

 

NIST case


Several of my colleagues in the NIST-7 display case after it has been placed in the rough opening of the unfinished wall.


Since I started on the exhibition, we have distilled the script into a sharper, more concise narrative. We have taken out some objects and added others that better tell our story. We have omitted one environment and embellished others. All this has made the exhibition stronger and more focused. Now I watch and wait, as all my best laid plans are constructed and installed, just hoping that the exhibition comes together as I imagined it. And hoping that it all fits.

 

Heidi Eitel is an exhibit designer at the National Air and Space Museum.

 

Packing for Spaceflight

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Museum staffers are busy outfitting our new shuttle middeck for spaceflight. No, not the actual crew compartment of Discovery, now on display at the Museum’s Udvar-Hazy Center in Virginia. This middeck is a reproduction recently installed in the Moving Beyond Earth gallery at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC.

middeck

View into the middeck reproduction as if entering from the shuttle payload bay

The middeck is an immersive feature that brings “living and working in space” to life. Visitors are invited into the middeck to see and feel for themselves the room that shuttle crews occupied during much of their time in orbit. Without the benefit of weightlessness to permit use of the overhead volume, it is easy, and surprising, to see what close quarters a seven-person crew shared.

The Museum is actively engaged in acquiring from NASA a variety of crew equipment—hundreds of small artifacts—typically used on shuttle missions. We are displaying many of these items in the middeck lockers where they would be stowed during flight. Visitors are welcome to open the lockers to see what is inside, safely installed behind glass. The contents range from ordinary (toothpaste and toothbrush) to extraordinary (gold and silver commemorative coins) flown-in-space items.

middeck lockers

Bank of lockers to be filled with crew equipment and other artifacts

To date, lockers have been loaded with some of the normal “stuff” of life in space—food, a portable computer and microcassette recorder, a digital camera and lenses.  Still to come: clothing, personal hygiene supplies, in-flight maintenance tools, experiment equipment, checklists, more cameras, and some shuttle housekeeping supplies. Some lockers ask tempting questions to encourage opening: What movie star is on board? (Buzz Lightyear!) Is soda fizzy in space? (Check out the modified Coke and Pepsi cans tried on the shuttle.) What’s for dinner? (Can you identify these processed foods?)

Besides the lockers, a reproduction shuttle toilet is perched just where it should be in orbit but can be wheeled out for a demonstration. Coming soon, we will add a sleep restraint, exercise cycle, and galley in their appropriate locations and other paraphernalia from shuttle missions, including the IMAX camera.

Apart from the pleasure of outfitting the middeck to give visitors insight into life in orbit, staff have paid careful attention to the actual middeck layout and sought to match locker locations to a real shuttle mission. We have selected items that suggest the full range of crew activities in orbit. Each item chosen for display undergoes an incoming inspection and condition report by our conservators, careful documentation and temporary storage by our collections managers, measurement and trial layout by the combined curatorial-exhibit design-collections care team, design and fabrication of a custom-mount to display it properly and securely without damage, and finally transport and installation into the designated locker. At the same time the artifacts are moving through this process, the exhibit team is drafting, designing, fit-checking, revising, and producing the labels that appear on or inside the locker doors. The team for the middeck project alone numbers about 20 people.

The Space Shuttle era has come to an end with the retirement of the orbiters, but the practical realities of living and working in space will be accessible for some time through the Moving Beyond Earth exhibition and especially the shuttle middeck. The next time you visit the Museum in Washington, DC, stop by and explore the middeck, all packed up for spaceflight. You may find some surprises there.

Valerie Neal is a curator in the Space History Division of the National Air and Space Museum. She is space shuttle curator and co-lead curator for the Moving Beyond Earth exhibition.