Volume 36, Issue 2 AIAA Houston Section www.aiaa-houston.org June 2011 Hubble RevisitedProject on NASA’s Aether 50th Anniversary AIAA Houston Horizons June 2011Page 1 June 2011 T A B L E O F C O N T E N T S From the Chair / From the Editor / From the Assistant Editor 3 HOUSTON ID of the Lone Man in the 1979 McCall Mural at NASA/JSC Bldg 2 7 Horizons is a quarterly publication of the Houston section Feature: Project Aether, Inspiring the Next Generation of Explorers 8 of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. NASA Photos: pp. 15, 40, 45, 81, 84 (ISS / Endeavour from Soyuz) 15 Douglas Yazell Editor Feature: An Astronaut Takes a Slow Flight by James C. McLane III 16 Mars Rover Celebration: Fun & Learning with Virtual Space Missions 24 Past Editors: Jon Berndt & Dr. Steven Everett Assistant Editor: Robert Beremand The Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA) Chapter 12 (Houston) 27 Editing staff: Don Kulba Contributors: Ellen Gillespie, Lance Borden, Dr. Steven The 1940 Air Terminal Museum at Hobby Airport 28 Everett, Alan Simon, Don Kulba, Daniel Adamo Current Events: Lander Test Starts Grass Fire at NASA/JSC 34 AIAA Houston Section Executive Council Dinner Meeting Report: State of the NASA/JSC Center (Mike Coats) 35 Sarah Shull An Evening with Mary Roach: Best-Selling Book Packing for Mars 38 Apollo Lunar Module LM-2: History by Captain Andrew Hobokan 41 Sean Carter Irene Chan Chair-Elect Secretary Annual Technical Symposium (ATS 2011) / Engineers as Educators 46 Ellen Gillespie John Kostrzewski The 42nd Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC) 52 Past Chair Treasurer The Red Baron Scenario in an Interplanetary Context: Daniel Adamo 61 Dr. Larry Friesen Satya Pilla Vice-Chair, Operations Vice-Chair, Technical John F. Kennedy and the Race to the Moon: New Book by J. Logsdon 66 Operations Technical STS-133 and STS-134 Crew Return Ceremonies at Ellington Airport 68 Dr. Gary Turner Dr. Albert A. Jackson Mir Splashdown 10th Anniversary Party 72 Lisa Voiles Dr. Zafar Taqvi Svetlana Hanson William West Space Fest: Yuri’s Night Houston 2011 74 Dr. Benjamin Longmier Dr. Steven E. Everett Joel Henry Chester Vaughan AIAA Houston Section Membership Anniversaries (25, 40, & 50 Years) 76 Douglas Yazell Dr. Kamlesh Lulla Melissa Gordon BeBe Kelly-Serrato IAF 2011 Frank J. Malina Astronautics Medal 2011: Yves Gourinat 77 Angela Beck Bill Atwell Rafael Munoz Sheikh Ahsan Horizons and AIAA Houston Web Site Aerospace Projects Review 78 Mathew Easterly Paul Nielsen AIAA National Communications Award Winner Gary Cowan Gary Brown Staying Informed & Calendar 82 Michael Frostad Ludmila Dmitriev Cranium Cruncher 85 Art by Don Kulba 87 Councilors The Back Cover: STS-134 90 Mike Lammers Shirley Brandt Sarah Barr 2005 2006 2007 Daniel Nobles Donald Barker This newsletter is created by members of the Houston section. Opinions expressed herein other than Julie Read by elected Houston section officers belong solely to the authors and do not necessarily represent the Holly Feldman position of AIAA or the Houston section. Unless explicitly stated, in no way are the comments of Gabe Garrett individual contributors to Horizons to be construed as necessarily the opinion or position of AIAA, NASA, its contractors, or any other organization. All articles in Horizons, unless otherwise noted, are the property of the individual contributors. Reproduction/republishing in any form except lim- More information at http://www.aiaa-houston.org/orgchart ited excerpts with attribution to the source, will require the express approval of the individual au- thors. Please address all newsletter correspondence to [email protected]. Cover: Project Aether, led by Dr. Benjamin Longmier AIAA Houston Horizons June 2011Page 2 Page 3 The AIAA Houston Section Year in Review From the Chair SARAH SHULL As I write this I am General Manager of Space We often have openings now in my final month Exploration at The Boeing on our section executive as your Houston Section Company. As a service to council that we are look- Chair. It has been a very you, our members, copies ing to fill. It has been a busy year so I am look- of all ATS presentations pleasure to serve as your ing forward to having a cleared for public release Houston Section Chair bit more free time this will soon be available on this past year. I’d like to summer but I am also a our section website at extend a special thanks bit sad to hand over the http://www.aiaa- to all of the council reins just when I feel like houston.org/ members this year, many I am getting the hang of Conferences.aspx. of whom put in numer- being at the top of the ous volunteer hours org chart. I will, of In conjunction with month after month to course, remain involved ATS we also held two ses- ensure that AIAA con- as past-chair and in other sions of the Engineers as tinues to be of service to roles for, I hope, many, Educators Workshop. This the Houston aerospace many years to come. two hour workshops, de- community. veloped and run by the K- Since the publica- 12 STEM Education Com- tion of our last issue we mittee at AIAA National, have held several very strives to teach engineers successful AIAA events, effective ways to inspire K including our Annual -12 students to pursue ca- Technical Symposium reers in math, science and (ATS) and first ever En- engineering. All who par- gineers as Educators ticipated seemed to really Workshop. ATS this enjoy the workshop and year attracted approxi- are eager to reach out to mately 150 presenters students in the area. We and attendees and dis- have had several request to cussed a variety of topics offer this workshop again ranging from future for those unable to attend commercial involvement the recent sessions and are in human spaceflight to working to offer it again in newly agreed to interna- the fall, so keep an eye on tional docking standards your e-mail. to space journalism. Keynote talks were As always, if you are given by Mark Erminger interested in getting more of the NASA JSC Com- involved with AIAA mercial Cargo and Crew Houston Section, don’t Office and Brewster hesitate to contact me at Shaw Vice President & [email protected]. AIAA Houston Horizons June 2011Page 3 Page 4 From the Editor Journalism in Aeronautics and Astronautics DOUGLAS YAZELL, EDITOR Horizons is a big job for but we get more out of AIAA if we follow a bimonthly our team every issue. Long- volunteering than we put into schedule. time editors since I started it. I purchased Windows 7 at volunteering with our section a Best Buy store. The web It’s amazing how good in 1999 are John Keener, Jon site www.techsoup.org makes Horizons looks on our Apple Berndt (15 issues) and Dr. software available for non- iPad at home using the bun- Steven E. Everett (7 issues). profit groups. Donations for dled app iBooks. Jon gets Bob Beremand and Don administrative costs are re- credit for creating the profes- Kulba are two of our regular quired for each software ap- sional and colorful look Horizons staff who might plication or suite of apps ob- found in Horizons in recent have time to fill in that role if tained in this manner. I now years, but it looks and feels needed in a pinch now and have, on our Apple MacBook much better on the iPad than then. Steve and Jon are also Pro, Microsoft Office Pro on a laptop or desktop com- potential backups when I am 2010 for Windows and puter. Each Horizons page in unavailable. Adobe Acrobat Pro X for the iBooks fills the screen in por- Mac OS, both from this trait orientation. A swipe Following Jon’s innova- source. About one eighth of across the screen with a fin- tions, we use Microsoft Pub- my expenses will be reim- ger takes the reader to the lisher for typesetting. It’s like bursed by our section. At next page. Each page snaps using PowerPoint, but Pub- least one other person from into place easily and quickly. lisher has some features that our editing team will be ob- When we pinch our fingers to make it worthwhile. taining similar apps from this zoom on text, it is crystal web site at his own expense. clear immediately at any size. As a non-profit group For example, it was only $31 (part of the non-profit AIAA for the Office suite of apps. Links to web sites in Ho- national group), we can buy But each order for Microsoft rizons work automatically Publisher and other software software products requires a when “www” or “http” is part at very affordable prices at minimum of five Microsoft of the address. With Adobe techsoup.org. products on the order. Acrobat, we can probably add links to our table of contents. I put a Windows 7 parti- “Real soon now” I will tion on our Apple MacBook install UNIX on a partition on I keep an eye on the new Pro (15” screen, purchased this home computer in order formats for space journalism. when we bought our iPad 1, to keep up to date with the Creating a PDF document for as soon as the Apple iPad related computer skills. Open our Horizons newsletter is was on the market) at home Office is software compara- not new, but it still works in order to typeset Horizons ble to Microsoft Office and well for now. A new book starting last issue.