Exploring space, for all mankind.

The Space Park of the Hall of Science of the 1964-65 New York World’s Fair. Listed below are descriptions of the exhibits numerically located on the above map, as written in a NASA Press release.

1. SATURN — Visitors who enter Space Park from the Ford Building pass under the business end of the five-engine S-1C stage of the three-stage Saturn V, which will propel American astronauts toward the Moon. This boattail alone stands 51 feet, but when fully assembled with the Apollo Command, Service and Lunar Excursion Modules mounted on top, Saturn V will be some 365 feet tall. Thrust: 7.5 million pounds (compared with 367,000 pounds for the Atlas, which launched Mercury astronauts).

2. APOLLO — Two of the three parts of the moonship are shown in this full-scale model: the Command Module (11 feet long, about 5 1/2 tons), which will carry the crew of three as well as guidance and control instruments; and the Service Module (23 feet long, about 25 tons), which holds main propulsion elements.

3. LEM (for Lunar Excursion Module) — This is the third major part of the Apollo craft, a full-sized model of “the Bug” in which two of the three astronauts will land on the Moon. A film depicts the Moon mission.

4. HEARTBEAT SENSOR— Visitors can see their heartbeat measured on this display explaining how biological sensors monitor physical state of men in space.

5. TITAN II - As seen in Space Park, with the Gemini spacecraft in place for launch, Titan II stands 109 feet tall and is 10 feet in diameter. Basically, it is a two-stage 90-foot booster developed by the Air Force. Its first stage develops about 430,000 pounds of thrust at sea level; its second stage, about 100,000 pounds at altitude. With two large solid-fuel rockets strapped on and a liquid-fuel third stage, it becomes Titan III-C, which stands 103 feet tall and can develop about 2.5 million pounds of thrust. 

6. GEMINI— the two-man Gemini spacecraft externally resembles the one-man Mercury but is wider at the base (6 feet vs. 7.5), taller (10 feet vs. 11), and heavier (3,200 pounds vs. 7,700). It also has docking apparatus for connecting with another vehicle in space — i.e., the Agena — and, instead of an escape tower like the Mercury, has ejection seats.

7. MERCURY SPACECRAFT— This is the actual Aurora 7 in which Astronaut M. Scott Carpenter orbited the Earth three times May 24, 1962. It is about 6 feet across the base, 10 feet tall, and weighs 3,200 pounds.

8. MERCURY SPACE RIDE— Here’s a chance for the kids — and father, too, if he has the urge — to take a simulated trip into space in a full-scale animated Mercury spacecraft. Climb in, push the button, and the countdown begins for an up-and-down ride made realistic by colored film of the Earth as it looks to an astronaut from 100 miles up.

9. ATLAS— As shown in Space Park, with the Mercury spacecraft in place, Atlas stands 92 feet tall. The basic launch vehicle, developed by the Air Force, has three liquid propellant engines developing about 367,000 pounds of thrust, stands 69 feet tall and measures 16 feet across the engine nacelles and 10 feet across the tank section. With Centaur as a second stage, Atlas can rocket a 1,300-pound spacecraft to Venus or Mars or a 2,300-pound payload to the Moon.

10. RANGER— This is an exact full-scale model of the Ranger VII, which televised more than 4,000 photographs of the Moon’s surface before hitting the Moon July 31, 1964. It is identical with the successful Rangers VIII and IX.

11. THOR DELTA— The full-scale booster on display, 90 feet high, has three stages and can rocket about 105 pounds to the Moon. Among 22 consecutive successful launches, it orbited Echo I, the TIROS satellites, and Ariel I. The Thor booster, which develops 172,000 pounds of thrust, also is used in Thor Agena, a two-stage 76-foot-tall rocket, and the thrust-augmented Thor (TAD), which has three Thiokol solid-fuel engines mounted around the base and develops 332,000 pounds of thrust.

12. EXPLORER I the first U.S. satellite to achieve orbit, was launched by the Army January 31, 1958, from Cape Kennedy, and is generally credited with discovering the Van Allen radiation belt. It was launched by a four-stage Jupiter C.

13. OSO (for Orbiting Solar Observatory) is a series of satellites like the full-scale model shown. Purpose: to study the Sun and its atmosphere. Also displayed are 1/8-sclae models of OGO (for Orbiting Geophysical Observatory) and OAO (for Orbiting Astronomical Observatory).

14. MARINER II— It was a spacecraft like this full-scale model which on December 14, 1962, flew within 22,000 miles of Venus and made scientific observations of that planet and the region of space between Venus and Earth.

15. NUCLEAR TEST DETECTION RESEARCH SATELLITES like that shown in full scale here, are being used to design world-wide detection systems. The Air Force launched two such spacecraft, five feet in diameter with 14,000 solar cells to power their 40,000 electric components, with the same rocket and put them into separate orbits. 

16. MARINER IV — Display shows a full-size model of the spacecraft launched toward Mars on November 28, 1964, on a 325 million mile space voyage to take measurements in interplanetary space and to photograph the Red Planet.

17. AGENA, named after a star, is 20 feet long, five feet in diameter, and its restartable rocket engine develops 16,000 pounds of thrust. With Atlas as a first stage, Agena launched Mariners and Rangers. In later Gemini flights, Agena will be a rendezvous-docking target.

18. ALOUETTE I, launched September 29, 1962, by a Thor Agena, was a project of the Canadian Defense Research Board and a part of NASA’s Topside Sounder Program to examine the structure of the ionosphere from above.

19. ARIEL — Both Ariel I, the first international satellite to be launched April 26, 1962, and Ariel II, placed in orbit March 27, 1964, designed and fabricated by the United Kingdom and launched by NASA.

20. DISCOVERER XIV, first U.S. satellite recovered from space by an aircraft in flight, was snared by an Air Force C-119 flying 8,000 feet over the Pacific southwest of Hawaii August 19, 1960. The 300-pound satellite, launched by a Thor Agena from Vandenberg Air Force Base, fired retro-rockets after 17 orbits, and a parachute lowered it into the recovery area. 

21. TELSTAR I, launched July 10, 1962, was the first communications satellite to handle all types of signals, including black-and-white and color television. Telstar II was launched May 7, 1963, and though, like Telstar I, was launched by NASA, had all costs paid by the American Telephone & Telegraph Co. as a step toward developing commercial satellite communications.

22. SYNCOM, for Synchronous Communications, is a satellite orbiting 22,300 miles above the Equator at a speed which makes it appear motionless from the revolving Earth. Syncom II launched July 26, 1963. Syncom III was launched August 19, 1964.

23. ECHO II, this highly visible inflatable 135-foot sphere of 0.00035-inch Mylar sandwiched in 0.0002-inch aluminum foil, was put in orbit January 25, 1964. The passive reflector communications satellite has been seen by millions of people worldwide.

24. NIMBUS, an advanced weather satellite that demonstrated the feasibility of around-the-clock cloud-cover photography from orbit. Nimbus I, launched August 28, 1964, sent back High Resolution Infrared Radiometer (HRIR) pictures by night and APT (Automatic Picture Transmission) pictures by day.

25. TIROS is an acronym for a series of Television Infra-Red Observation Satellites, the world’s first weather satellites. One TV camera system can photograph more than 600,000 square miles at a time; the other, more than 200,000 square miles. TIROS VIII tested the Automatic Picture Transmission (APT) system, which sends cloud-cover photos to relatively inexpensive (about $300,000) mobile ground stations.

26. BIOSATELLITE - A series of six biosatellites will be put in near-Equatorial orbits, starting in 1966, at altitudes of 180-200 miles for three to 30 days to investigate the effects of weightlessness, space radiation, and changes in day-night rhythm on such living things as laboratory animals, plants, cells, and tissues. Purpose: to see how long-duration space flights might affect men.

27.SPACE SHUTTLE - The six-foot-high, jet-propelled, one-man craft shown here is a concept developed by the Air Force Aeronautical Systems Division for hauling cargo and personnel between orbiting spacecraft. Its three mechanical arms could be used to assemble structures in space.

28. EXPLORER XVI, launched December 16, 1962, by a Scout from Wallops Island, Virginia, responded to 1,600 commands to read out experiment data between December 16, 1962, and July 26, 1963. It recorded more than 15,000 meteoroid hits on sensors covering about one-tenth of its experimental surface.

29. SNAP-8 (for Space Nuclear Auxiliary Power System) a 35-kilowatt generator with 10,000 hour lifetime, is intended for such uses as Moon-based electric power plant and an on-board electric power plant for large manned space laboratories. AEC and its contractor, Atomics International, are responsible for the nuclear subsystem; NASA and its contractor, Aerojet General, for the power conversion subsystem.

30. NERVA (for Nuclear Engine for Rocket Vehicle Application) is a project to harness the power developed by hydrogen heated to a very high temperature in a nuclear reactor and expanded through a nozzle. Under the Space Nuclear Propulsion Office, a joint office of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the Atomic Energy Commission, the work is being done by an industrial contractor team on the basis of technology from AEC’s Kiwi reactor at Los Alamos.

31. X-15 - The full-scale model on display is the X-15(2), the newest configuration of the record-smashing rocket-powered airplane which was jointly sponsored and built by the NASA, Air Force, and Navy. The first craft was delivered in October 1958, to NASA’s Flight Research Center on Rogers Dry Lake near Edwards, California.

32. Offices.

33. Reception area.

All text and images are from Bill Young’s excellent 1664-65 NYWF site, which can be found here! 

This is part of a series on the Space Park of the 1964-65 New York World’s Fair.

spacewatching:

Black Arrow taking off

The United Kingdom and the case of the flying lipstick….

Got to show Bryce (Senior Crown) around St. Pete today!

Russian Bion-M1 satellite returns to earth with most of its animal crew dead.

The satellite launched last month carrying a plethora of rodents, insects, and other creatures to study the prolonged effects of weightlessness.

The Institute of Medical and Biological Problems says that the low survival rate was “to be expected.”

Here’s a link to the article, and here and here are links to the posts I made regarding the launch in April.

Nose to nose, Enterprise and Discovery come face to face at the Smithsonian.

Also, new blog! I started it because, well, let’s face it, spaceships are cute, and we catch them doing cute things! Project retro-rocket (Michael) and I will be running it.

cutespaceshipsdoingcutethings.tumblr.com

spacewatching:

The replacement of fins on the Apollo Soyuz Test Project S1B launch vehicle continued at KSC today. The decision to replace all of the fins was made when small hairline stress corrosion cracks were discovered in holddown fittings. Replacement of the fins is not expected to delay move of the launch vehicle to the launch pad on March 24. ASTP, the joint U.S./USSR space mission is scheduled for mid-July.

If I remember correctly, these cracks were caused by the booster’s prolonged storage.

spaceofficer:

Seattle Worlds Fair 1962 vintage photo 1960s Rocket SPACE by Christian Montone on Flickr.

The “Space-Age World’s Fair”

Oh, how I would have loved to have gone! It was the only world’s fair in history to have a NASA pavilion. The 1964-65 New York World’s Fair has the “Hall of Science” which help NASA-related and sponsored exhibits, including a Saturn V boat tail, Mercury-Atlas, Gemini-Titan, and F-1 engine, and the 1970 Exposition in Osaka, Japan re-created the previous year’s Moon landing, but only the 1962 Century 21 Exposition in Seattle actually had a standalone NASA pavilion. 

The Seattle World’s Fair was the first International Exposition in America since the famous 1939 New York World’s Fair almost 23 years prior, and being at the beginning of the Space Age, wanted its theme, like many world’s fairs, to look towards the future. Dubbed the Century 21 Exposition, pavilions showcased future “technology” and what their corporation was doing to give you the world of tomorrow, today! It gave us famous landmarks such as the Space Needle, Seattle Monorail, and Pacific Science Centre.

The NASA pavilion was located just south of the main section of the fairgrounds, and hosted a wide variety of exhibits ranging from rocketry to satellites and Earth Science. A replica Saturn I/IB boat tail hung from the ceiling (as seen in the above photo), directly above the world’s first liquid-fueled rocket.  

This exhibit talked about satellite technology, the various satellites in orbit around the earth, orbital mechanics, and the different types of launch vehicles America was using in 1962.

Here we see it from farther away, showing what I believe to be a Pioneer series satellite and another Astrogator-like globe exhibit.

Other sections talked about the Mercury 7 astronauts, Kennedy’s goal of landing a Man on the Moon, and the upcoming Gemini programme.

John Glenn visited the fair two and a half months after his orbital flight, and helped dedicate the Pavilion along with vice-president Johnson. (Read more about his visit here.)