Flask Talks on Goddard and Operation Paperclip

Feel free to respond to any of the questions below!

-- What was the most interesting or surprising idea you heard in any of the flash talks from today's class?
-- Which of the other groups gave the most effective flash talk today and why was it particularly effective (you cannot choose your own group's!)?
-- What was the most difficult part of today's exercise?
-- How effective was today's exercise in helping you retain info from the readings or helping you think about Hall's content from new perspectives?

 There is a brief instance where the passage mentions the "incredible technological advances over a relatively short time span". This struck me as interesting and I would like to learn more about these advancements in space technology at the time. Could these advancements have been made sooner if more stress had been placed on space research? Our society could be vastly different today if these technologies had been perfected say 20 years earlier.

Interesting fact: Socorro Pueblo

I thought that Hall’s reference to Onate and Socorro was intriguing because it was so brief, and because I wanted to know what happened to the pueblo after Onate and his men were there. I wanted to make sure we didn’t overlook or sugarcoat the experiences of indigenous groups.

The people who lived in the area at the time were known as the Piro. The Spanish did not officially settle the area at the time; it was not resettled until later, after the original pueblo had been destroyed. During the Pueblo Revolt in 1680, by which point the population had significantly declined due to Spanish presence, Spaniards fleeing the revolt stopped in Socorro. Most Piro went with them as they continued south, while others scattered. Socorro was resettled in 1815, many years after they reconquered the area.

Removed from the Hall of Fame

When I was researching the inductees to the Space Hall of Fame, I found out that of the 173 inductees, one, Hubertus Strughold, was actually removed by a unanimous vote in May of 2006. I was curious about why that was, and it turns out that he was a member of Operation Paperclip, and while the US Government had tried to cover up his war crimes, they eventually came out in the 1980s. Roughly 20 years later, he was removed from the Hall of Fame. To me, this seemed like a slow response, especially considering the heinous experiments that he conducted, which I will not write here for the sake of decorum.

I was next curious about where the line was drawn in regards to controversial scientists in the Hall of Fame, so I searched through the list of inductees to see if any other controversial Operation Paperclip scientists were still in the Hall of Fame. While nobody got close to Strughold, there were a few who were very involved with the V-2 rocket program, including Werner Von Braun himself. While he is controversial, I can at the very least understand why he is still there, while Strughold was removed, but when combined with the fact that it took 20 years to remove Strughold, I am somewhat suspicious about the hesitancy of the Hall of Fame, and the scientific community as a whole, to reevaluate and censure those who may have left a black mark on history.

Walt DIsney is in the International Space Hall of Fame

I can't confirm exactly why, but it seems to be because he put out 3 space themed specials for his television show that were scientifically acurate and informed by actual scientists. They were good enough that President Eisenhower showed one of the specials to Pentagon officials.

Interesting Fact

 I wanted to find out more about Gus Grissom, but ended up looking more into the Gemini project instead. The Gemini program fell between the Mercury and Apollo programs in 1965 and 1966, and was the gateway into space travel. NASA needed to determine if astronauts could survive in space for a several days at a time, and the Gemini missions enabled NASA to do so. The Gemini capsules were also larger than the previous Mercury program, which allowed more than one astronaut to fly into space. Each of the Gemini missions served a different purpose, from testing a new vehicle to being able to connect two aircrafts to orbiting in space for a few weeks at a time. All of these tests were important to determine if astronauts could go to the moon.

Virgin Galactic

 Virgin Galactic is a commercial space travel company. Their spaceship comes in two parts. One is like two commercial planes joined together side-by-side. This piece is called WhiteKnight2. It flies up to 50,000 ft. Then, the second part, SpaceShip2, will detach and fly using rocket fuel into space. Passengers will experience micro-gravity and be able to enjoy views of the Earth and outer space. The entire ship is recoverable and reusable. 

Their stated mission is to open space to everyone. Someday, they may even be able to fly people to orbiting hotels or research labs. They also think transcontinental travel could be revolutionized by their spaceship design. Currently, however, their space travel is for rich elites only, as tickets are very expensive. 

Curiosity Rambling

 I started thinking about Spaceport America and a rumor I had heard about Elon Musk's plans for launching numerous satellites that would theoretically make the stars no longer visible (I thought it was a stretch). I wanted to know what his future plans were here in New Mexico through SpaceX. I found absolutely nothing as far as current plans, BUT I did find out that the Spaceport was a deal between the then NM governor and Virgin Galactic back in 2006. The construction project cost $220 million that was paid for with public funds from the nearby counties in hopes of building the local economies. I honestly don't know what I make of the deal but this article from the Atlantic was pretty spicy in terms of seeing the Spaceport as a tourist feature and not a space enterprise. 

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/03/new-mexicos-sad-bet-on-space-exploration/554243/

9/8 Interesting Idea: Moon Treaty

 From the exercise I was wondering about the politics of space. This lead me to discovering the moon treaty. Basically it was this attempt at an international treaty to regulate what can be done to the moon and how. I'm not sure if I completely understood it but that's what I got from my reading of it. Also in 2020 president Trump refused to have the US sign the treaty because he views the moon as a "free enterprise". The main part of the treaty that people take issue with is the regulation of harvesting resources from the moon. The treaty says that if you want to take resources it needs to be approved by all the other countries. This a large reason why the treaty doesn't have many signatures, including that of the "big three" countries.

Interesting Idea from Space Pioneers Introduction

While reading the introduction for Space Pioneers, I found it very interesting that the history of space in New Mexico seemed to be so closely tied to the history of missile testing. In fact, one of the two major players in the creation of the International Space Hall of Fame which we were introduced to had his background in missile testing. So I got curious why this is. What I found in my brief time researching was that Alamogordo, where this museum was opened, was not only the home of the White Sands Missile Range, it was the site of some of the first tests of the Manhattan Project. White Sands Missile Range was also the location of some of the first rocket tests by Jet Propulsion Laboratories. Proving how intertwined they are, the website for the museum today features a tour of the Trinity Site. Along the same thread, I discovered that the US government never tested Alamogordo for residual radiation from the nuclear tests, and this site is a rare one where no compensation was given to residents who later developed cancer or autoimmune diseases.

-Ashley Krattiger

Animals Reactions

One of my questions in section 2 was what are the animals reactions during the launch into space as the cannot possible comprehend what is happening to them. I looked it up and found that there are not many images or responses to the first space travel, because technology was limited. However when it comes to tests in the 60s and 70s you can see much more. I watched videos of some frogs, mice, and the only cat to go into space. Essentially they all look terribly freaked out with the experience but they are strapped in. Some even had spacesuits! 

Interesting Fact

Cordless power tools were originally invented for space. Freeze-dried food, flame-resistant firefighter gear, the integrated circuit, lightweight insulation, improvements to kidney dialysis, lightning detection, and automated credit card transactions are also spinoffs of technology developed for space

9/8 Interesting Idea Search

 So I found a few things, but I will talk mainly about 2. The first one is I was looking into what are some of the reasons that NM so suited for space travel. There are the things people who know the history of the state know, like our role in creating the atomic bomb and how that brought in a lot of people who were in the field. That took me to looking at White Sands and one of the interesting things I found is that after the Columbia came down after an 8 day mission in 1982, it ended up landing at the Northwest Strip at White Sands, and that was the only time that backstip has been used for a space shuttle landing.

I also ended up looking into a bit of space tourrism in NM, which lead me to looking at "Spaceport America". Honestly I never knew about this before and it is interesting to think about how this could affect both NM as a whole and also the smaller towns around it like T or C and Las Cruces. If somthing like this takes off (pun intended) it could mean massive change for those communities. The article I was looking at, however, seemed to be pretty pessimistic about it so it will be interesting to see how it plays out. 

The article I was reading: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/03/new-mexicos-sad-bet-on-space-exploration/554243/

Spaceport America

 New Mexico currently holds Spaceport America, a spaceport near Truth or Consequence. It’s considered to be “the world’s first purpose-built commercial spaceport” and is designed/constructed for commercial users. It opened on October 18, 2011 and was open to the public on June 24, 2015. Visitors can book tours and suborbital flights. Labeled as a futurist tourist attraction, it has various tour buses that bring passengers around gift shops and other attractions. The first successful flight was in January 2018, said to promise that space tourism is just around the corner. Unfortunately, there’s a $250,000 fare that allows passengers to spend only a few minutes in zero gravity. 

“The romance of space distracts from the reality that at the end of the day, Spaceport America is a publicly financed resource mainly serving private companies, built on a long-stalled promise of bringing new money and a daring new tech industry to a jobs-hungry and very poor region”

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/03/new-mexicos-sad-bet-on-space-exploration/554243

Part 2- interesting fact

 One of the ideas presented briefly that I found really interesting was that Alamogordo was a close second to Los Alamos in doctor's degrees, scientists and physicists at the time. I just wonder why Alamogordo doesn't get as much credit or isn't talked about that much in terms of such a topic. Everyone seems to know that Los Alamos is the hub for scientists and other researchers because of their labs, but I have never heard anything about Alamogordo in that sense, or even about their museum.