Matt and Carol's Travels: Up to Huntsville, AL

Our drive from Lake Martin took us up to Huntsville, where we parked ourselves at Redstone Arsenal.

The sites were spacious, and trees were not a concern. During our stay they were working on an area in the trees that will contain about 15 sites in the trees. The campground has some nice walking/biking paths around it, and I tried as many as possible.

Close to Redstone Arsenal is the Space and Rocket Center. The website is: http://www.rocketcenter.com.

The center is broken into several buildings and an outside exhibit. After buying our way in, the first area is an omage to the toys of space.

Bet some of you didn't know Barbie was an astronaut. It is kind of funny the Ken did not qualify for the space program. In case you may not be able to see the date on the box, it is dated 1965.

G.I. Joe also got his opportunity to explore space. The capsule must have been a convertible, looking at how his helmet sticks out of the capsule.

The Cabbage Patch Kids were not going to be left out from venturing to space.

There were many more dolls made to accommodate the new frontier of space, and you will just have to visit the center to see them yourselves.

What is a holiday without your very own Christmas ornament for the tree.

You need a drink, you had a choice between a soda, or alcohol.

The next area is where the American space program began, with a 15 year old boy, named Wernher Von Braun.

Here is a display of his early renditions of space travel... and from here is history. For those that cannot read German, the upper page reads as follows: SUPPLIES to be taken along: photographic equipment, food for 100 hours, anti-glare glasses of varying intensity, divers suit with heating and cooling system, oxygen for 120 hours, spare window and bulbs, signaling equipment, tools, astronomical telescope, radio equipment, rock samples, and test equipment. Wernher was definitely a thinker at an early age. More about Von Braun later.

You're looking at the various suits our astronauts wore during the early days of the space program, up to today. The suit on the right is the Shuttle Ejection Escape Suit. This suit was used by the first shuttle mission. The next suit is the A7L Apollo Commander Suit. The suit was designed for moon missions, and were specially made for each individual. Second from the left is the Gemini Spacesuit. This suit was tested by the Air Force, and worn for many NASA milestones, including the first multi-crew, first extravehicular activity or spacewalk, and first rendezvous and docking by two spacecraft. Far left suit is the Mercury Suit. The suit was originally designed by the U.S. Navy for high altitude flying.

One has to understand that Redstone Arsenal played a big part in the space program, but it was originally an Army facility, that is why this museum is located here in Huntsville. Let's continue our travels through the center.

The next section provides a look into the progression of some of the missiles our militaries use.

The bottom missile is the Longbow Hellfire. This is a helicopter launched, fire-and-forget missile. This weapon was used against anti-armor vehicles, enemy air-defense, and threat helicopters. The next two are the Hydra 70 2.75" Rocket. This rocket was either rotary or fixed-wing launch, playing an air-to-ground role. It was used against anti-personnel/material, suppression of threat assets, smoke, and illumination. The rocket was used as late as Afghanistan and Iraq.

How about a couple of challenge questions?

Q1: which U.S. Army missile defense system uses NASCAR technology to enhance soldier performance?

A: Thermal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD).

Q2: what is the common theme among U.S. Army helicopters?

A: they are all named after Native American Indian Nations.

Moving on we came to an interactive shuttle exhibit.

Here we had the opportunity to land the space shuttle... Carol did a better job than I did... maybe its time for her to take over driving the rig.

I was really amazed at how the shuttle and rocket travel to the

launch pad. The assembly traveled the 3.4 miles, at a speed of .8 MPH, secured to the Mobile Launch Platform with eight of the bolts to the left. There was a nut on each side of the bolt. The upper bolt had an explosion pack on it for splitting the nut in half at launch. Keep in mind, the shuttle leaves the platform, reaching a speed of 18,000 MPH, in 8 minutes.

In space is a whole different world. How many of you like spaghetti w/meat sauce... enjoy. Freeze-dried at its finest.

There are a lot of areas that we regular humanoids would have to come to grips with. One such area is taking care of personal bodily functions, another is the opportunity for exercise while on the International Space Station (ISS).

Remember I mentioned personal business... this is the Urine Processor Assembly rack. If you should be wondering what is done with the urine... well... it is recycled into potable water, used in food preparation, and for hygiene purposes.

I promised you exercise on the ISS... by way of the treadmill. If I was looking at it right, joggers are running uphill. NASA has a requirement that astronauts exercise two hours a day. You might also notice that the astronaut must be harnessed in, otherwise they would float away.

After all the work and exercise, there may be time to sleep... and here are your sleeping quarters...

That's right, you are strapped in for the night.

Continuing through the exhibit, visitors come to the exit, and into view of the outside of the ISS.

Leaving the International Space Station exhibit, we headed outside. Before we get outside, lets look at a training tank.

This tank is filled with water, simulating the weightlessness of space. If you go on the center's website, you will notice that space camp attendees also train in this tank.

Now we will go outside. Some of the buildings are not accessible, they are used for the Space Camp. Our first stop was at the rocket booster pack, less the space shuttle.

Normally the Pathfinder would be sitting atop the booster pack, but due to weather damage the shuttle was removed for restoration. The booster pack was being restored during our visit too. The Pathfinder was built here in 1977, and 1988 was installed here for training purposes.

Right next to the booster pack was the shuttle training aircraft.

This is the Gulfstream II C-11A, G1159. Originally NASA was looking at the Boeing 737, but it was cost restrictive. Shuttle astronaut pilots need live situation training after simulator training. What happens is the instructor gets the plane in position for landing, then hands it over to the shuttle pilot for landing. It has been said that landing this plane was like landing a brick.

Moving to another area there is a monster in our way...

they called it the Saturn I rocket. This rocket was first created in 1961, here in Huntsville. This rocket is taller than a 16-story building, and able to carry 10 tons of payload into earth's orbit.

1964 saw the rocket heading into space with our first unmanned spacecraft. In 1965 three satellites were launched into space. The Saturn rocket saw two versions, blocks I and II. Block I did not have stabilizing fins, nor an upper stage engine. With improvements the Saturn rocket took our first astronauts into space in 1968. It also did three Skylab missions during 1973-74 season. In 1975 it took Apollo astronauts up during the Apollo-Soyuz test program. It was eventually replaced with a more improved rocket.

Continuing around the grounds we came across the U.S. Air Force's SM-65 Atlas-F, which was America's first intercontinental ballistic missile (ISBM). It was first successfully launched in 1955.

This Atlas rocket was also used to launch astronauts into space, before the Saturn rockets.

The next stop was a little different than usual, because it begged to question what type of creatures live in outer space. The ground is

simulating the surface of the moon, but this bird decided to make a nest among the rocks.

For those of us who have not been to Skylab, they had one on exhibit. It was America's first space station occupied May 1973 to February 1974, housing three separate crews.

While up there crews performed experiments to enrich our knowledge of Earth, Sun, and cosmic space; they also conducted tests on the effects of weightlessness on humanoids. In 1979 Skylab came crashing through the Earth's atmosphere, disintegrating over Australia.

How often do you think about national security? NASA thought about it quite a bit. You are looking at the Army's first two-man submarine.

Believe it or not, this submarine was used to retrieve debris from Atlas, Titan, and Minuteman ICBMs. This submarine made more than 470 dives.

There were other outside exhibits such as tanks, personnel carriers, more missiles, and a couple of rocket engines. I mentioned earlier that we would visit the Saturn V, and we are on our way to that building.

This is as close as Carol and I will ever get to the astronaut program. This suit is in the entry way to our next building.

Here is what you all have been waiting for... A Saturn V rocket. Before I let you see it, I want to talk a little about the engines. The F-1 engine was the most powerful engine made.

The first stage of the Saturn V had five of these engines. It was designed to burn for 150 seconds (2 1/2 minutes), propelling the Saturn V over 38 miles in the the atmosphere, and then a horizontal distance of 350 miles from the launch pad. For those of you concerned about gas mileage, these were not your typical commuter engines. Each engine consumed 2,000 gallons of liquid oxygen and 1,350 gallons of RP-1 kerosene... and that was per second.

During the development of this engine, Huntsville knew about it; during their testing, windows in downtown Huntsville were known to be broken due to vibrations. These tests could be heard up to 90 miles away from the test stand. All tests sent the rockets over the Atlantic Ocean. In 2012 the founder of Amazon.com efforts recovered components many Apollo flights, including Apollo 11.

What is neat about this exhibition hall are the docents. The volunteers actually worked with Von Braun on the space program. This Saturn V is displayed in its sections.

This was my attempt to experience traveling in a spacecraft. The problem here, which I later learned, was a size limitation. I met the height restriction... it was the weight restriction that was the issue... it was designed for a maximum weight of 165 pounds, and I was a tad over that.

One of the displays is the history of the space program from conception to present.

Let's talk about Werhner Von Braun's dreams for space exploration. The German Army offered him an opportunity to develop his theories, which brought about the V-2 missile.

This was the culmination of his efforts up to 1932. Thanks to Hitler, Mr. Von Braun was forced to set aside his dreams of space travel, so that Germany could concentrate on building V-2 missiles for bombing England. If you are asking yourself how Mr. Von Braun worked our space program, it had to due with the advancement of American forces into Germany. Several rocketeers besides Mr. Von Braun surrendered to the American forces, and began developing missiles for the United States.

When the government approved the space program, the Navy was originally slated to launch a satellite, using the vanguard rocket, Von Braun recommended that it be a joint Navy-Army effort, but his recommendation was rejected. The Army gave Mr. Von Braun the green light to develop the launch at Redstone Arsenal. It took a couple of years before the Secretary of Defense to authorize the Army Ballistic Missile Agency (ASMA) to plan for a back-up launch at Redstone Arsenal. In all the governments indecision, the Russians were able to launch the first two satellites into space. The first satellite was Sputnik, which beeped for 22 days; Sputnik II sent an animal into space, and unfortunately the dog overheated a couple of hours into the mission and died.

Do you out there know what this is?

This was the memory for the Saturn rocket. What you are actually looking at is one of fourteen planes that made up a Launch Vehicle Digital Computer (LVDC). The fourteen stacked planes made up the memory module. These planes were hand woven by technicians. Each one of those planes contained 8,192 ferrite cores (beads), equaling 1 bit of information per core. Depending on how the core was woven in, it would be either a 1 or 0 bit of information. One memory module equaled 114,688 bits. Depending on the mission, they could add additional memory modules.

Another display is the Apollo 16 command module.

These capsules were not designed with comfort in mind.

The astronauts options were sitting (center of photo), or lying down (right side of photo). It wasn't a piece of cake getting through the Earth's atmosphere either, the module lost some of its heat shield, needless to say, it didn't go on any other mission.

If you remember earlier I talked about Skylab, and its return to Earth. Pieces of the Skylab were recovered from the Australian outback. The piece that is on display at the center is the fuel cell.

This was an outstanding place to visit.

It was time for us to leave and head to lunch.

We took a trip to a local residents house, now a kind of museum and village, Burritt on the Mountain.

Visit: https://burrittonthemountain.com/explore/dr-burritt-the-mansion.

Dr. Burritt was born in Huntsville in 1869, becoming a homeopathic doctor. The doctor married, later losing his wife due to complications from surgery. His second marriage was to a wealthy St. Louis woman, they remained in St. Louis, where he redirected his attention from medicine to rubber manufacturing.

In 1933 his second wife died and he inherited a good portion of her wealth, and he returned to Huntsville.

In 1938 he began building his home on the mountain, unfortunately it took two tries because it burned down the first try.

Dr. Burritt was a man who liked things different, and it showed in items in the home. The fireplace hearth in the dining room is one example. The photo at the right is a speaker cover.

We walked outside to the garage where Dr. Burritt's DeSoto can be seen.

You may notice in the photo that there are two concrete runners (originally trough-shaped channels) leading to the garages, they were to aid drivers when parking a car in either garage... failed idea, they didn't work.

When Dr. Burritt died, the car was left in the hands of a property caretaker. In 2000 the car was restored, and moved to the garage in 2010 for the 55th anniversary of the museum.