I felt like a kid again. On the morning of April 17, I stood amid a crowd of fellow staffers on the rooftop terrace of the National Museum of American History, waiting expectantly for the flyover of space shuttle Discovery. This last shuttle was taking its victory laps over Washington before retiring to the National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center near Washington Dulles International Airport. Just before 10 a.m., Discovery came out of the western sky, strapped to its 747 mother ship and escorted by a single jet fighter that looked puny by comparison. My mind flashed back to a day in April 1981 when I was visiting the Science Museum in London. The whole museum came to a halt to watch a video feed of the landing of Columbia, the first of the shuttles. At once exultant and sad, I knew this final flight sealed the end of the shuttle program that had for a time thrilled the world.
As Discovery passed by the Washington Monument, I could hardly imagine anything more, well, patriotic. For forty-five minutes it banked majestically over the city. The crowd, gazing skyward through sunglasses, binoculars, and camera lenses, completed the picture in a familiar scene—almost a cliché—from every space launch with humans onboard. But this flight was different.Discovery was not going into orbit but to its final, appropriate resting place in “Museumland.” After three decades, the space shuttles are now history, relics of 1970s technology. Yet, for their day, the shuttles were an amazing feat of engineering. When other American and Soviet orbiters simply parachuted to Earth or ocean after completing their missions, the shuttles flew, glided, landed, and went back into space again. Discovery had completed a record thirty-nine missions.
Eerily, just as Discovery appeared on the horizon, I heard the words of Joseph Henry (1797-1878), the Smithsonian’s first Secretary, echoing from the Museum’s Mall entrance. It seemed almost on cue, but it was just a fantastic coincidence. Actually, it was the amplified voice of costumed actor Dwane Starlin, who at 10 o’clock every morning greets visitors at the Museum, speaking in Henry’s own words about his vision of the early Smithsonian (and giving a preview of the exhibitions inside the Museum). One of Starlin’s special talents is that he never drops out of character. You can’t trick him; I know because I’ve tried. That morning—I couldn’t quite hear—I’m sure he remarked on the sight of the space shuttle, which in fact flew over the Smithsonian Castle, where Henry lived and presided. I’m equally confident that he never let on to knowing anything about the mysterious machines overhead.
The unexpected coincidence of Henry’s words with Discovery’s flyover led me to ponder what the real Henry would have thought about the advances in aeronautical engineering 150 years into the future. Could he have ever envisioned something like Discovery being brought into the Smithsonian collections?
The most famous American physicist of the 19th century and a pioneer in electrical invention, Henry was versed in the latest advances in American science and technology. Though he died a quarter-century before the historic flight of the Wright brothers, he had some involvement with human flight through ballooning. During the Civil War, Henry gave his endorsement to Thaddeus Lowe, a New Hampshire inventor and meteorologist, who offered his services to the Union cause. Lowe said he could use his balloons for aerial reconnaissance of enemy positions, and showed that it was possible to communicate from balloon to ground by telegraph, an invention that owed much to Henry’s experiments three decades earlier. The Smithsonian Secretary supported Lowe to become head of the Balloon Corps, but first insisted on a careful review of his claims and proposals to ensure that they were consistent with meteorological and other physical laws. Henry advised Lowe that only powered, heavier-than-air vehicles, which did not yet exist, could attempt to fly against the direction of air currents; lighter-than-air balloons would always be subject to the winds.
Henry regarded himself a scientist, but he was fascinated by technology and was always willing to give advice to serious inventors. Most prized of all by Henry were technologies of discovery—those at the cutting edge of scientific knowledge. If guided by science, Henry saw no limits to what technology could do. This spirit of discovery was what he instilled into the Smithsonian. So, would he have been shocked by an aircraft calledDiscovery? On reflection, I don’t think so.
In his new book, Space Chronicles: Facing the Ultimate Frontier, Neil deGrasse Tyson, head of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History in New York and a man who always inspires me, laments NASA’s seeming inability to get beyond the space shuttle. No longer reaching for the planets or the stars, America’s human space program, he writes, portends a flagging spirit of innovation. His book is a warning, and I share some of his dismay. The space shuttle flights had become routine engineering (apparently too routine, given two shuttle disasters) and not what Henry would consider “discovery engineering”—NASA’s true mission.
Yet, while human space flight gets the most attention these days, there is still a great deal of “discovery engineering” in the planetary sciences at NASA. Just think about the unstoppable Mars rover developed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (see my earlier column, “Traveling Light”). The Mars Science Laboratory Project, which includes the Curiosity rover (due to land on the red planet on August 6), is nothing short of spectacular and I can hardly wait for it to get rolling. I encourage you to explore NASA’s website—especially the videos that combine real footage with animation—to understand the challenges of navigating to Mars, landing such a large payload, and making and manipulating the rover’s robotic arm.
The Mars Science Laboratory combines scientific investigation with radical engineering. Light years beyond the routine, it is the very definition of discovery engineering. And just like witnessing Discovery, once a paragon of engineering, complete its final flight, anticipating the landing of the Mars lab makes me feel like a kid again . . . and piques myCuriosity.
Editor’s note: For more on one of Discovery’s most beloved crew members, see Margaret Weitekamp’s blog post about the donation of Buzz Lightyear to the collections of the National Air and Space Museum by Toy Story creator John Lasseter. And in the “Did you know?” department, one of Thaddeus Lowe’s balloons was named Enterprise, just like the shuttle at the Udvar-Hazy Center that Discovery is replacing!
From Prototype, April 2012.
