Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, December 27, 1994 TAG: 9412270033
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: DUBLIN LENGTH: Long
It is, in fact, the future they will be living in, NASA Aerospace Education Specialist Lawrence Gilbert told the more than 600 children from kindergarten through 5th grade during his visit.
Hands shot up like rockets when Gilbert asked the youngsters how many of them would like to work in space someday.
``You're going to have tremendous opportunities to go up in space, but there's a little price to pay,'' he told them. ``It's not money. It's education.''
Space will be open to an ever-growing number of professions in the years to come, he said, but all of them will require education.
``All these studies are going to be the doorways to your future,'' he said.
Gilbert showed models of aircraft being designed, including the X-29, which has wings swept forward instead of backward like traditional streamlined jets. Its individual jets can maneuver it up, down and sideways as well as straight ahead.
``We're working with a new idea called thrust vectoring,'' he said. ``Don't be surprised if you see that.''
Then there is the B-22 Osprey, the product of 35 years of research, with two helicopter rotors on top that flip down to the front once in flight and turn it into a traditional plane that can travel up to 340 mph. It can drop down and pick up passengers without an airport runway, and also be outfitted as a flying hospital.
``Within another two years, you'll see a lot of these planes flying around,'' Gilbert said.
Next came the SR-71 Blackbird, which the U.S. Air Force operated for 30 years before turning it over to NASA. It set a speed record of more than 3,000 mph and can fly from Virginia to California in 52 minutes, Gilbert said.
``And in your lifetimes, you're going to be able to fly at speeds like that or even faster,'' he added.
The High-Speed Civil Transport has been under development for about 15 years and could make it from Roanoke to London in two and a half hours, he said, instead of the six to 10 hours now required. But it was the windowless X-30 National Aerospace Plane, being designed to fly up to the edge of space before dropping down to its destination, that most fascinated onlookers.
Gilbert said it will be powered by jets, not rockets, because of increased jet efficiency now possible, and reach speeds of 17,500 mph. It could cross the United States in 10 minutes and go from New York City to Tokyo in 90 minutes, he said.
Its 300 passengers will see outside through view-screens, since windows would break at those speeds, just as the characters in ``Star Trek'' see outside the Enterprise.
``Guess where they got their idea from?'' Gilbert asked. ``These are the kinds of technologies you're going to be working with in your lifetime.''
Anyone who has been on roller coaster rides at amusement parks already has an idea of what it is like to ride on NASA's space shuttle, Gilbert said.
Weight increases going up a roller coaster ramp just as an astronaut's weight does during the eight and a half minutes when the shuttle is rocketing up its first 300 miles. At the top of an amusement park ride, the rider becomes momentarily weightless as the astronaut does in orbit.
But roller coaster riders do not have to get up at 4 am. for breakfast, and wear 75-pound space suits for six to eight hours during the countdown, or lie on their backs for two solid hours with their feet up before blastoff, he said.
``During that time period, you're not allowed to talk or even to move,'' he said. ``There are no potty breaks.''
So how does one handle such basic necessities?
``Back in the '60s, we came up with a solution for it. In the '70s, we gave you the solution,'' he said, holding up a disposable diaper.
He said the ``smoke'' billowing from beneath the shuttle rocket on blastoff is really steam. The rocket contains 537,000 gallons of liquefied hydrogen and oxygen, which make up water. The rocket itself is ``the world's largest beverage can ... What you see here is nothing but a large steam generator but, as such, it's enough to get us off the launch pad.''
Once in orbit, the shuttle falls around the curve of the Earth every 90 minutes, giving its occupants a sunrise or sunset every 45 minutes. The effect of this ``free fall'' is weightlessness, which makes eating interesting and drinking impossible without straws.
``The first day and a half that you spend up there in space, you're all going to grow about three inches,'' Gilbert said, because the body stretches in weightlessness.
Astronauts go back to their normal heights when they return to gravity.
Gilbert tried shuttle sleep restraints on a teacher and two students, showing how they resemble sleeping bags with armholes but with attachments to hook them to a wall so the sleeper does not float into something.
He also applied a blowtorch to a shuttle tile until it was red hot, and handled it in his bare hands within seconds. The shuttle tiles heat up to 2,000 degrees because of the friction from the atmosphere when the shuttle speeds down from space, but the tiles dissipate the heat and keep the astronauts from being cooked.
Gilbert also provided a little history lesson. NASA, he said, was founded in 1915 as the National Advisory Committee on Aviation and had its name changed in 1958. As for the first working model of a flying machine, he said, it was not the Wright brothers' airplane but a device made more than 400 years earlier, in 1488, by artist and inventor Leonardo da Vinci.
by CNB