AirSpaceMag.com

From the 2011 Team America Rocketry Challenge

These kids yawn at your typical roof egg-dropping challenge. Tomorrow, 100 teams will compete in the Team America Rocketry Challenge. The teams are made of three to ten middle and high school students, who have already bested hundreds of other teams from around the country to make it to the D.C.-area competition, where they’ll send handmade rockets into the sky for top-notch prizes.

The Challenge started in 2002 as a celebration of the centennial of aviation, but the response and support was so big, it’s continued annually ever since. The kids register in the fall and spend all year with a teacher-supervisor and a mentor from the National Association of Rocketry to learn the math and physics required to blast up to the required altitude (this year it’s 800 feet), while carrying two raw eggs safely up and back down to Earth.

The top ten teams split $60,000 in cash and scholarships, and are given opportunities with NASA’s Student Launch Initiative and trips to international air shows with member companies from the Challenge’s sponsor, the Aerospace Industries Association.

If you’re in the D.C. area, you can head over to see the teams compete tomorrow during an event that’s part celebration of science, engineering, and nerdery (people have been known to dress up in costume), and part introduction to the competitive world of the aerospace industry. The “Final Flyoff” happens in the Great Meadow at 5089 Old Tavern Road, The Plains, Virginia, just about an hour drive from Washington, D.C. Bring a picnic and watch the launches throughout the day, from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. In between, wander around the exhibition area that will feature aerospace company displays, mini-rocket demos and contests, and college representative to talk about their science and engineering majors. Then see the Rocketry Challenge winners, and very likely the future leaders of the aerospace industry, crowned at 5 p.m.

The Saturn V rocket was moved outside the Vehicle Assembly Building for the U.S. Bicentennial celebrations. Photo: NASA / Kennedy Space Center

When the Apollo program ended in 1972, one lonely Saturn V was left at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The never-was Apollo 18 rocket was dismantled into stages, then reassembled in front of the Vehicle Assembly Building in 1975 as part of the U.S. Bicentennial celebrations the following year. And there it continued to sit for two decades, rotting in the Florida humidity. In 1996, the Smithsonian teamed up with NASA to restore the Saturn V and give it a new home, protected from the elements, with a full educational experience for Kennedy Space Center visitors.

But this wasn’t as simple as it was with the newly built rocket in the 70s. “The Saturn rocket was pocked with gaping tears, rusted rivets, frayed wire, and fungi and other plant growths,” writes Andrew R. Thomas and Paul N. Thomarios in their new book, The Final Journey of the Saturn V. And Thomarios would know: he’s the president of The Apostolos Group, the team that was hired to do the rocket restoration.

Thomarios shares his firsthand knowledge of the grueling process to clean, repair, and move the five-stage vehicle into its new museum-quality building. It’s depressing to read the state the Saturn V had been left in for so long:

The rocket parts were covered with mildew, chewing gum, bird feces, and other items that defied description, but stuck to the rocket’s exterior. The gunk was so think that Nick Bolea, a long time Thomarios employee, decided to get on his employer’s good side by using a power-washer to write “Thomarios” in five-foot-high letters… [The employees] stopped work one day because a mysterious purple runoff was oozing out of the rocket. A hazardous material team was summoned to investigate. After some analysis, the team discovered the material wasn’t dangerous after all, but was fruit juice from berries birds had stored in the rocket’s interior.

And that’s not including the difficulties in working with the rocket itself, even without the grimy handprint of Mother Nature: the asbestos in the heat panels, the detailed documentation required by the Smithsonian, the rigorous safety standards implemented by a post-Challenger NASA.

This largely untold story seems like a fascinating focus for a book. It’s too bad The Final Journey only really gets to it in the last chapter, and not in the kind of detail you’d expect for, you know, a book. The first hundred pages of the 120-page book are a brief summary of the space program, from President Kennedy’s 1961 moon speech through Apollo — presumably to explain to the reader why this massive restoration was embarked on, though it seems unnecessary for anyone who would pick up a book with “Saturn V” in the title. There are 24 pages of color photos, many provided by Thomarios and not seen elsewhere, from the restoration, which are worth seeing. A space program follower won’t get much more from it, unfortunately, but The Final Journey would be a nice read for the young burgeoning space fan.

We caught wind of Yves “Jetman” Rossy back in 2008 when he used his jet-powered wing to cross the English Channel. He kept working on the design and practicing his flying; he was featured on the popular British show Top Gear earlier this month, and just released this pretty impressive video. It seems like our perfect dream of a personal jetpack is missing just one thing: take-off from the ground. But don’t worry, Rossy is working on it.

JETMAN from Evert Cloetens on Vimeo.

Update: Oops, it looks like that video was taken down from Vimeo. Instead, enjoy some of these earlier videos: Jetman flying with a couple of actual jets, and some spectacular scenes while flying over the Grand Canyon.

This afternoon, retired space shuttle Discovery was officially transferred to the National Air and Space Museum. The orbiter went on a spectacular fly-by of Washington, D.C. on Tuesday to land at Dulles International, where it was de-mated from the 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft. Then early this morning, Enterprise — the orbiter sent on test drops to prove the shuttle could glide back from space — left its home inside the James S. McDonnell Space Hangar, where it had been on display since 2004.

Smithsonian and NASA officials led a ceremony (pictures below) to say goodbye to Enterprise (it will leave for New York City’s Intrepid Sea Air & Space Museum next week) and hello to Discovery, which rolled into view of thousands of spectators, stopping nose-to-nose with Enterprise. An impressive gathering of former Discovery astronaut commanders, along with Senator (and former Discovery payload specialist) John Glenn, were there for the event, and guests received a live video call from the astronauts aboard the International Space Station.

Discovery will be rolled into the McDonnell hangar around 5 p.m. If you’re in the D.C. area and want to see the shuttles today, the National Air and Space Museum is open late, until 6:30 p.m. (tonight only). Parking after 4 p.m. is free.

Photos by Heather Goss

Yuri Gagarin on his way to Vostok Launch. Photo: NASA Collection / Asif Siddiqi

Tomorrow marks the 51st year since humans first went into space. Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin launched aboard Vostok 1 on April 12, 1961, completed one orbit of the Earth, and landed one hour and 48 minutes later. Twenty years later on the same date, the U.S. introduced its space shuttle with the launch of STS-1. Astronauts John Young and Bob Crippen took Columbia on its maiden voyage around Earth (37 times) to check out all the systems, gliding back to the ground just over two days later.

On the 40th anniversary of Gagarin’s flight, April 12, 2001, the first World Space Party celebrated “humanity’s past, present, and future in space.” Yuri’s Night became an annual celebration that now has over 200 events on all seven continents, including costume parties, stargazing events, art exhibits and, often, the launch of new projects related to space history.

Some of us at Air & Space HQ in Washington, D.C. will be headed to Science Club (yes, we have a bar named Science Club, how great is that?) to try to build up our nerd-cred in their Space Trivia contest, then may show off our lunar dance moves at Artisphere this Saturday. You can find plenty of other events, from Moscow (naturally) to the South Pole, at the Yuri’s Night website.

The 51st anniversary of anything can be a bit of a downer after the extra-celebration for that auspicious five-oh number the year before, but some of last year’s projects are worth revisiting, like British filmmaker Christopher Riley’s re-telling of Gagarin’s flight, First Orbit. Riley, whose work also includes In the Shadow of the Moon and the BBC series, The Planets, dug up audio files to tell the story in the cosmonaut’s own words. This year, the British Interplanetary Society is using Yuri’s Night to kick off screenings of First Orbit in 30 languages through the end of May. If you can’t make it to London to see it on the big screen, you can still watch the full-length movie on YouTube.

It seems like there’s always a new angle of any story to tell, so here’s a photo book that was published last year, Road to Gagarin, which we mostly enjoyed because of this weird little film — about a goose farm in Cuba named for Gagarin — the authors made while researching the book.

How will you celebrate human spaceflight tomorrow?