Photos from DC 5th April
change from the norm this time......a but of a quiz for you. CJ should get some of these, I expect great things from Uncle Pete.......
Easy one to start off with....who's, and when?
Gene Kranz's waistcoat from the Apollo 13 mission.
Two related items next......firstly, what is this?
It's the arming key from, and the last remaining piece of, Sputnik.
And how does it relate to this? And what happened to this item?
This is TV3, which was supposed to be America's first satellite, but the rocket exploded on the pad, hurling the satellite 300 yards. One of the technicians noticed a strange bleeping noise after the put the fire on the pad out, and found the rather battered satellite in a swamp.
Yes, it's a Saturn F1 engine. No prizes for that. But why is it special?
It's the very first production F1 engine.
Keeping with Apollo, what's this? And, CJ ,where was it invented???
It's the Apollo GNS, guidance and navigation system designed and built at the Charles Stark Draper lab at MIT and installed in the command module. The Mercury equivalent was the size of a small van.
Not so easy....what is this, and what is it's significance?
This is the TV camera from Surveyor 3, which the astronauts rather forcefully removed during the Apollo 12 moon landing and returned to Earth.
This is a tricky one.....what is this......?
Real tricky one this....it's a mockup of the equipment rack in the Hubble telescope, used in the neutral buoyancy tank in Houston to train the spacewalk crew...... .
Next up, one of the greatest engineering triumphs of the whole space programme......but what is it?
It's the liquid oxygen injector plate from an F1 engine.
A bit of wood. I'll confirm its from the 1903 Wright Flyer. But why is it a special bit of wood?
It went to the moon on Apollo 11.
Not a quiz this one.......continuing my tour of spacesuits and no1 on today's "unexpected finds" list, Al Sheperd's original Mercury suit. As peed in by the man himself....
And a few other finds....first up needs no introduction....
Wearing a black armband as a tribute to Mrs Henson, who died a few days ago.
The original Ruby Slippers....
Who's watch??.
The great man himself, Mr Abraham Lincoln.
And what relates the watch to this furniture.....?
No idea why this will not show on the web, the code looks fine. it was supposed to be the table and chairs where the Confederates surrendered to the Federalists, ending the US Civil War and re-uniting the Northern and Southern states.
