Neil Armstrong was a true American hero: a small town Ohio boy; an Eagle Scout; a certified pilot as of age 15; an aerospace engineer; a naval aviator who flew combat missions in Korea; a test pilot; a pilot and commander on two Gemini missions; the commander of Apollo 11 and the first man on the Moon.
He slipped the surly bounds of Earth, put out his hand and touched the face of God so many times; once again surrenders to that embrace.
NASA just released a new photo from the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity Rover:
This image shows one of the first views from NASA’s Curiosity rover, which landed on Mars the evening of Aug. 5 PDT (early morning hours Aug. 6 EDT). It was taken through a “fisheye” wide-angle lens on one of the rover’s Hazard-Avoidance cameras. These engineering cameras are located at the rover’s base. As planned, the early images are lower resolution. Larger color images are expected later in the week when the rover’s mast, carrying high-resolution cameras, is deployed. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
See more STS-135 photos and more spaceflight posts.
Flickr user aharvey2k unearthed photos of a Space Shuttle Orbiter full-scale mockup which Lockheed built in order to secure the prime contract on the Space Shuttle. It was displayed on February 27, 1975 in Donwney, CA and apparently it is still stored there in pieces.
There is a fascinating paper by John Griswold entitled, Preserving the Orbiter: Stabilization, Disassembly, Relocation and Storage of an Historic Space Shuttle Mock-Up which documents the history, dismantling and storage of the mockup in 2003:
In late spring, 2003, an important artifact from the beginning of NASA’s Space Shuttle (Orbiter) Program had reached a critical moment. In its original location since 1972, the only existing full-size mock-up of the spacecraft would have to be moved to another location. Here it would wait to become the centerpiece of the future Downey Space Museum. Given its construction of plywood veneer over a wood frame, and its massive size, this was a formidable prospect.
The Space Shuttle mock-up was originally built to fulfill a requirement of the contract bidding process, but remained a useful tool for the program for the next several decades. In spite of the relatively ephemeral materials of its construction, it lasted for years as an accurately proportioned simulation of the exterior and interior spaces and features of the actual vehicle, modified over the years to reflect updates in design. The mock-up lacks a left wing in a measure to eliminate redundancy and to save space. The flight deck, crew quarters, cargo bay, and engine compartment are authentically fitted with every detail, often represented by simple painted wood shapes or silk-screened plastic or metal sheeting. This verisimilitude allowed engineers to accurately check prototypes of planned equipment in their intended location. Some prototype items, such as a machined metal restraint for astronaut’s boots at the airlock to the cargo bay remain in place. Mock-ups of payload equipment and containers were also tested for fit, and one array of simulated electronic equipment on a specialized pallet remains bolted in the cargo bay today. The Remote Manipulator System (RMS), a jointed, rotating arm made for deploying payloads, built by Canada, is faithfully represented by an accurate, nonworking replica in aluminum. It is bolted to the port side of the payload bay.
Located in the Design and Engineering Integration Room, or DEI Room, the orbiter mock-up was used for a number of other purposes. It was a centerpiece of public relations and a visual aid for communications with members of congress and other government officials, who frequented a two-tiered complex of office and conference spaces across from the mock-up.
Downey City bought the mockup and associated buildings of the now-closed Downey City Boeing Space Systems Division plant. Currently the city is renting the facility for feature film productions by major Hollywood, making use of the large indoor spaces, and open airfields surrounding them. This necessitated the removal of the Space Shuttle Mockup – quickly – due to a movie production necessitating the creating of a giant indoor lake. It is clear from Griswold’s report that the stabilization team did the best they could in a tricky situation: they were continually pushed to speed up the dismantling and storage ahead of the movie shoot. Furthermore, the current storage site’s roof is leaking and large amounts of dust have settled on the mockup’s surface.
Below is a photo I had from the NASA archive, showing the mockup from the aft view:
Reader JG who was involved with the original conservation updates us on the current status of the orbiter mockup conservation program:
As far as I know [the orbiter mockup] is still there, but I suspect that conditions have eroded over the years. We have not been brought in for any formal maintenance or monitoring follow-up, although I know the director of the new Columbia Memorial Space Center next door was concerned. The Tyvek enclosure was beginning to fail, and demolition was continuing around the space.
Via the always awesome NASA Spaceflight.com comes this link about the Vultee Field / Downey Field and the LA Times has a story about the Space Shuttle Orbiter Mockup coming out of storage: ‘The original space shuttle’ to come out of hiding in Downey (don’t miss the photos):
A photo from 1975 shows a space shuttle mock-up in a warehouse in Downey, CA. Credit: Boeing
This week, officials in the city of Downey turned their attention to another shuttle, long forgotten to most of the world. Sitting in a nondescript warehouse in Downey, under a coat of dust and waves of plastic sheeting, is a full-scale mock-up — largely made of wood and plastic — built in 1972 by shuttle manufacturer Rockwell.
For decades, the 122-foot-by-78-foot model has remained hidden away at the former manufacturing site that was the cradle of the nation’s space program. But that’s set to change. On Tuesday, the Downey City Council approved the temporary relocation of the mock-up to a large tent on a nearby movie studio parking lot where, starting late this summer, people may be able to catch a glimpse of it.
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Officials hope that the public can see the model under the new tent within the next three months, and that eventually it will become part of a new planned exhibit at Downey’s nearby two-story Columbia Memorial Space Center. A hands-on learning center on space science that opened in 2009, it is an official national memorial to the crew of the space shuttle Columbia, which broke apart on reentry in 2003, killing all seven on board.
…In the early 1970s, Rockwell decided to build a full-scale mock-up as part of the proposal effort. At the time, the world had never seen a winged space plane before. Before the shuttle, astronauts reached space by squeezing into a small capsule launched atop a massive rocket.
“It would be used for marketing our design approach to NASA and also be an engineering aid to our designers and manufacturing engineers,” said Gerald Blackburn, a former shuttle worker and now president of the Aerospace Legacy Foundation, a nonprofit organization of former aerospace employees who work to preserve Southern California’s aerospace history.
Also, from Jacques van Oene come these photos from the mockup, circa 1999:
CollectSpace.com is reporting that Original 1972 space shuttle mockup moved outdoors for Downey, CA display:
The original full-scale mockup of the space shuttle, which hasn’t seen the light of day since the early 1970s, emerged from a warehouse into the California sun on Thursday (July 12) to be put on outdoor display.
The full-size wood and plastic model was transported on a flatbed truck the short distance from the building where it for decades served as a design and demonstration tool to an open-ended tent that was erected in a parking lot near the Columbia Memorial Space Center in Downey, Calif.
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The shuttle will remain under the temporary tent until the city has the funds needed to construct the building, which will be located adjacent to the Columbia Memorial Space Center. City officials, together with the Aerospace Legacy Foundation, will seek sponsors to underwrite the display.
Space Shuttle Discovery DC Fly-Over (201204170012HQ), a photo by nasa hq photo on Flickr.
Combining mid-century illustration, Futura and the Apollo Mission: Apollo Mission Events (via Draplin).
You want to go to there.
Zappos wants to join the likes of Port Sunlight (Lever Soap), Pullman, IL (Pullman Coach), and the Reedy Creek Improvement District (Disney) in creating their own company town with Tony Hsieh’s new $350 million startup:
Hsieh and a few partners — the vast majority of the investment is Hsieh’s — plan to spend $350 million to develop and build a small city in the roughly 1.5-square mile downtown area around the Fremont East and Arts District areas (for CES-trekkers and other Vegas aficionados, it’s a few miles north of the Strip). Hsieh’s goal: To turn the overlooked area into a neighborhood not just for his workers’ coffee breaks, but a new live/work/play destination for Las Vegas’ emerging creative class.
This is the plan (modest it’s not): $100 million will go to the purchase of land (not including the new Zappos headquarters) and building acquisition. An additional $100 million will go to residential development including the building of high-rise apartments. Fifty million dollars will go to tech startups Hsieh plans to recruit to the area with seed investments of $100,000 or so apiece. Another $50 million will go toward drawing local small businesses like bakeries, yoga studios, restaurants, coffee shops and other requisite creative-class amenities. And because Hsieh wants people to move here and that requires having decent education for their children, another $50 million will go toward education and the building of — what else? — a school system.
This is an interesting counterpoint to the typical start-up’s wish to create an inward-facing campus (Google, Apple, et al) to house, feed and care for their employees. The urbanist in me hopes that Zappos’ succeeds in creating a place in such a damn-awful location which is Las Vegas. It would be well worth the investment to have their campus to be as permeable as the urban core.
It strikes me that so many new trends are just about “rediscovering” historical precedents. Look at Lifestyle center retail, such as Easton Town Centre (below), which explicitly returns to mixed-use town center designs. It isn’t so much as New Urbanism “won” (whatever that means), but that for the last 100 years or so, we were building automobile-dominated space, place and cities. Now developers and city agencies realize there is a pent-up demand for walkable urban living.
It will be interesting to see if the spaces they create are more like Fog Creek’s new office which is more private, supporting alone work; or, will the open-office illustrated by Foursquare’s new office be built. Kottke is dismayed that working in solitude on the decline:
The New Groupthink has overtaken our workplaces, our schools and our religious institutions. Anyone who has ever needed noise-canceling headphones in her own office or marked an online calendar with a fake meeting in order to escape yet another real one knows what I’m talking about. Virtually all American workers now spend time on teams and some 70 percent inhabit open plan offices, in which no one has “a room of one’s own.” During the last decades, the average amount of space allotted to each employee shrank 300 square feet, from 500 square feet in the 1970s to 200 square feet in 2010.
There was a time where we thought working alone was the only way to accomplish tasks; a certain strand of Taylorism of the office emerged in the early 20st Century, dominating space and hierarchy for half a century. Recently both technology and work theory has moved toward collaborative, and often multidisciplinary, teams. This is how we work at IDEO: small, nimble teams of experts in their own disciplines who come together to solve a problem.
My sense is that a healthy office culture values flexibility of space and workstyles in order to maximize their worker’s skills and output. It seems, to steal from Bob & Denise, office space needs a both-and solution: create varied typologies of space, each with a point of view and type of work clearly defined. Sprinkle liberally, and trust your people to choose where to work and when, so they can get their job done.
This means creating project spaces which facilitate groupwork; phone booths which allow single- or couples to make phone calls; small private offices which allow people to go “heads down;” kitchens and eating areas which allow mixing of colleagues; open-office studio space to house workers when they aren’t in project, phone or private space. The “white room” (above) at Stanford’s d.school is a great example of space which has a point of view, but is flexible. Classical “multipurpose space” (endemic with their horrible accordion dividers), without a point-of-view on how people might use the space, is a waste of resources and will lead to the exact negative feelings of open office Kottke abhors.
STS-135 Landing (201107210002HQ), a photo by nasa hq photo on Flickr.