As a boy in the late 1950s, one of Harold Egeln's favorite books was "THE ANSWERS TO THE SPACEFLIGHT CHALLENGE" by the late science reporter and space artist Frank Tinsley, a member of the British Planetary Society.
In "A SPACER'S TELESCOPE" Star-Log, activist Egeln tells of his interest in space and hopes for an active pro-spacefaring future, and the individual, national, global and cosmic Spaceflight Challenges.
CHILDHOOD CHRISTMAS AT SPACEPORT IRVINGTON, NJ
"THEY MADE THE CHRISTMAS TREE LOOK LIKE A ROCKET SHIP." |
In Greenwich Village there is a great toy store, Alphaville, at 226 West Houston Street, between Hudson St. and 6th Ave., featuring great vintage space toys, many from the 1950s. There is a link below, and also links to other websites relating to toys and TV show referred to in the above article. Enjoy!
CHILDHOOD SPACE LINKS: | ||||||||
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A SPACESHIP GAIA-LOG Entry by Harold Egeln
When I was a boy, one of my delights was when my family once traveled from our place in Irvington, New Jersey to Baychester in The Bronx to visit Freedomland, the East Coast's answer to the West Coast's Disneyland. My favorite part of New York's 205-acre theme amusement park, in the shape of the continental United States and opened in 1962, was Satellite City, one of seven sections highlighting American history and scenes.
Freedomland featured more than 200 exhibits and 40 rides. Unfortuantely it lasted only a few years, as urban renewal came, and it was replaced by the huge Co-Op City apartment building complex.
Here is how my mint-condition "Freedomland Official Guide" describes Satellite City:
"Stroll down Astronaut Avenue from America's past into an exciting glimpse of the future -- Satellite City. This is the world of space travel and atomic power --and many other wonders we can only dream about today....
"All of the tense excitement of Cape Canaveral will grip you at the Blast-off Bunker -- an authentic reproduction of the blockhouse at America's missile test center. You'll watch expert technicians and scientists prepare the space capsule for the attempt to orbit an astronaut around the earth. As the countdown nears zero, you'll move to an observation bay, where you'll see the magnificent missile poised on the launching pad.
"Suddenly the engines are ignited, the missile lifts off slowly, gracefully off the pad and thunders toward outer space. You'll follow the rocket's course on a tracking screen inside the blockhouse. And, you'll be right on the scene when Navy ships recover the capsule and its heroic passenger.
"For a musical experience you'll never forget, step into the Space Ship, a remarkable sound chamber from which famous disc-jockeys will be broadcasting your favorite music to thousands of radio listeners.
"You'll also want to see the many special exhibits on modern science and industry in Satellite City. They'll give you a chance to find out what the future holds in store. For the weary space traveler, there's a Moving Sidewalk which takes you without effort across the Moon Bowl Dance floor. And there's a snack stand and spaceport refreshment center in Satellite City that are reall yout of this world."
Having never visited Tomorrow Land at Disneyland nor Disney World, then and now, this remains my closest, cherished experience of such a World of Tomorrow, except for the Futurama I visited alone twice at the New York City World's Fair in 1965.
For a glimpse of Satellite City and to enter the Freedomland website, click-on the link below: | |
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Friday, December 24, 2004 -- 'Twas the Night Before Christmas... As the Huygens space probe was freed from its Cassini mothership around Saturn this Christmas Eve to prepare for a mission into planet-sized satellite Titan's thick, lush atmosphere on January 14, and hopefully a landing, there are reminders of two past Christmases when space missions flew much higher -- though not as fast -- than Santa Claus's sub-orbital reindeer-powered sleigh that zips around the planet tonight.
Everyone thinks first of the great, historic circumlunar spaceflight by the three Apollo 8 astronauts of December 1968, broadcasting a Christmas greeting back to Earth as they orbited the Moon ten times on Christmas Eve and Day. But just 10 years before, an American president's voice was beamed to Earth from orbital space.
The first Space Christmas Spectacular was just over a year after the historic orbiting of Sputnik I, when the U.S. on December 18, 1958 orbited the Project Score satellite, actually an 85-feet-long 4.5 ton Atlas rocket. The Air Force ICBM missile, which just 22 days before had its first suborbital test flight, traveling over 6.000 miles down-range, was the largest and heaviest satellite orbited up to that time, outstripping the Soviet's 2,925 pound Sputnik III launched on May 15, 1958. It was also the first space rocket that used an automated guidance system to place a satellite into orbit rather than using brute force.
The huge Score-Atlas satellite was equipped with an Army Signal Corps 150-pound communications system, with a backup aboard. Messages beamed from the Earth would be recorded and were played, on command signal, back to Earth. The first and most prominent voice was that of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, beamed to Earth, a bit scratchy and garbled, on December 19, making for the first human voice sent to Earth from space. The banner headline story in the "Newark Star-Ledger" (New Jersey) of December 20, 1958 blared:
"ATLAS BROADCASTS IKE'S MESSAGE *** VOICE RELAYED FROM SPACE"
A photo shows Ike listening intently to his message. The first article's lead paragraphs read:
"Washington (AP) - The voice of President Eisenhower broadcast from America's four-ton satellite in space the classic Christmas message, 'Peace on Earth and good will toward men.'
"As the 85-ton Atlas rocket whirled around in orbit past Cape Canaveral, Fla., the unique communicatons system flashed the recorded words:
'This is the President of the United States speaking. Through the marvels of scientific advance, my voice is coming to you from a satellite travelling in outer space. My message is a simple one. Through this unique means I convey to you and to all mankind America's wish for peace on Earth and good will toward men everywhere'."
The feat was touted by the U.S. government as a peaceful usage of space in the ongoing Cold War competition between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. at the time. The satellite, in an orbit varying between 114 and 928 miles, was in orbit for less than a month.
At a press conference following the headline-making broadcast of Ike's recorded voice from the Score-Atlas, the AP article recounts:
"He (Pres. Eisenhower) called the feat 'one of the most astounding things again in this age of television,' and said maybe television-in-space would be next. He laughed when reporters suggested that presidential news conferences might be conducted that way. 'Yes, we might use that,' Eisenhower said, adding archly, 'Where would you people like to be then?'"
This was a few years before Telstar in the early 1960s, a pioneering communications satellite which linked Europe and North America in the first live television broadcast. (In early TV history, Edward R. Murrow's "See It Now" linked both U.S. coasts in a live TV broadcast for the first time followed soon after by Dave Garroway's "Wide, Wide World" TV series, both in pre-satellite times.)
The giant satellite was then seen as a step towards a permanent human outpost in orbit by 1963. Remember that in 1958, NASA's creation was still a year away and the selection of the first seven Mercury astronauts a year after that.
Another front-page story in the "Star-Ledger" was headlined: "ATLAS SPACE STATION POSSIBLE IN 5 YEARS."
"New York (AP) - An Atlas space station with a crew of four men could be circling the Earth within five years, the makers of the Atlas missile said yesterday. The space station would be put into an orbit 400 miles over the Earth with Atlas rocket power... But there are no formal plans for such a venture.
"It is the brain child of Kraft Ehricke, a former German V-2 rocket expert and cohort of Wernher von Braun. Ehricke is a staff member of he Convair-astronautics team that built Atlas. A modified lightweight stainless steel shell would be the basic space station unit. By adding a second stage to the Atlas, the rocket system would be able to deliver a crew of four or some 8,000 pounds of cargo into space."
This plan was mapped about seven years before MOL, the Manned Orbital Laboratory, a space station announced by the Air Force and then scrubbed, as was the first space shuttle plan, the military Dyna-Soar space shuttle announced in 1965.
Let's see how the predecessor to Skylab, Salyut, Mir, and the ISS was described by the AP story at Christmas time in 1958:
"The space station would weigh some 15,000 pounds and would be about 106 feet long. It would carry a nuclear power supply in its rear end. Small rockets would rotate the the station in space some 2-and-1/2 times a minute, providing some measure of gravity for the crewmen.
"The crew capsule would actually be a rubber nylon structure. It would be divided in four levels, inside the Atlas shell. (The water regeneration and sanitation systems would be in the bottom level.) Right above that would be the galley and recreation room -- and on the third floor would be the sleeping room. The fourth floor would be the the control room and laboratory.... Crews would be changed every two weeks at first. Then duty periods would lengthen to a month. Fresh supplies would be delivered about once a year. But it would take up to 20 rocket flights a year to keep the station and crew in trim."
That is space history that would have been! Shortly after the Project Score-Atlas feat, the Soviet Union, on January 2, 1959, launched a rocket, Luna I, which passed the Moon by 4,000 miles and then went into solar orbit, the first artificial satellite to orbit the Sun. This happened almost three months after the U.S. Pioneer I space probe became the first human-made Earth object to escape Earth's gravity in an attempt to reach the Moon. It soared out about 75,000 miles and then headed Earthward.
Back to Apollo 8 at Christmastide in 1968. After it finished its last lunar orbit, Apollo 8 headed back to Earth. Astronaut and senior pilot Jim Lovell, after the successful maneuver, said: "Please be informed: There is a Santa Claus."
Season's Greetings and have a wonderful 2005... To The Stars!
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By Harold Egeln
October 4, 2004 -- "What a day this has been, what a rare mood I'm in! Why, it's almost like being in space!" to paraphase a song from a famous old Broadway musical. Yes, what a day it has been for space travel hopefuls around the world!
As SpaceShip One soared 70 miles into space and back today for the third time since June, and the second edge-of-space hop since last Wednesday, hopes also soared for opening space to world citizen space travelers within a few years, with costs coming more down to Earth much later.
New astronaut Brian Binnie's historic short suborbital 69.7 mile high spaceflight exceeded NASA's X-15 record of 67 miles in 1963 and won the $10 million Ansari X-Prize for the Mojave Aerospace Venture company of White Knight-SpaceShipOne designer Burt Rutan and financier Paul Allen.
In The New York Times front page story, "Rocket Ship Wins $10 Million Prize As Private Venture" by John Schwartz, there is this notice: "Space buffs were ebullient. 'The right stuff is back,' said George T. Whitesides, the executive director of the National Space Society, a non-profit educational group."
Rutan and Allen deliberately chose the right day for the Right Stuff.
Exactly 47 years ago today the world was awed when the old Soviet Union launched the first space satellite into Earth orbit, Sputnik I, officially inaugrating the Space Age, even though jazzed-up mass produced Americanized V-2 rockets, the A4s, had shot into space since the late 1940s and a batch of metal neddles were orbited in 1949.
Back in 1957 I heard the news early on Friday evening, and I was glued to the TV and radio, and went out early on that Saturday to get the newspapers with their blarring headlines:
"U.S. Tracks Red Moon 558 Miles Out In Space" in the Newark Evening News and "Russians Launch Satellite: 1st 'Moon' Streaking 'Round Globe" in the Newark Star-Ledger.
Later "LIFE" magazine had a cover story on Sputnik, with three scientists plotting the orbit, with astronomer J. Allen Hynek standing on a ladder with a black rope around a giant globe.
On this new hstory-making October 4th famous pioneering astronaut. Gordon Cooper. 77, an original Mercury astronaut, died. "Gordo" made 22 solo orbits of the Earth on May 15-16, 1963, and later, in August 1965, spent eight days in space with astronaut Charles "Pete" Conrad aboard the Gemini 5 space capsule.
In 2000 Cooper published his own book, "Leap of Faith: An Astronaut's Jouney Into the Unknown" (HarperCollins) discussing his life, his time as an astronaut, and even the controversial subject of UFOs. (There will be a review of his book in an upcoming newsletter.)
On display in my place is the full issue of LIFE Magazine of September 14, 1959 with all Mercury astronauts on the cover and the title: "First-Person Reports of THE ASTRONAUTS: Start of Contining Exclusive Stories on Epochal Mission."
When the first Sputnik was launched, making the Space Age soar, I was a boy (working at four grades ahead of my class level with an intense science interest), and for me, a space buff since my early school days, captivated by movies like "Rocketship X-M" and "Conquest of Space," and TV shows like "Captain Video," "Rocky Jones, Space Ranger" and "Space Patrol."
Now, with the third suborbital spaceflight of a private rocket ship, which has gotten countless numbers of people around the world excited at future space prospects, and the passing of pioneer space traveler "Gordo" Cooper, we can see almost a half-century of the Space Age behind us, with its triumphs and frustrations, the sweet with the bitter, and a new dawn setting the stage for Open Space for the public space traveler taking shape. WOW!
What will October 4, 2051 be like 47 years from now? Just Imagine:
.....Thousands of people traveling in orbital flights, and hundreds of people living and working in space, on the Moon, Mars and space posts elsewhere in the solar system, perhaps studying and cataloging life in Europa's vast ice-covered ocean, in Titan's soil and under the Martian surface.
....."Noah's Arks" with Earth's precious life sample cargo on the Moon and, perhaps, Mars, with the Earth's environment in a major crisis, and the next generations working hard to save the gravely damaged biosphere.
.....Official confirmation of nonhuman intelligent life out there and interacting with humanity here in some form now only preceived, perhaps, in enigmatic shadows, silence and stealth.
"Which shall it be? This or all of that out there?" said Charles Cabal, looking spaceward in 2036, in the 1936 "Things To Come" movie.
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December 2003 -- A CHRISTMAS TREE in my home dates back to 1967, purchased at Bambergers Department Store in Newark, New Jersey. It has been with me for 37 Chistmases, in the best and worst of times.
This year it was decorated with glow-in-the-dark stars, planets and comets, an "AD ASTRA" SPACE TREE for SPACE EXPLORATION.
In past years the tree has had Wizard of Oz figures, hobbits and their friends, elves and faeries, sci-fi actions figures, rabbits and owls, trains and carousel horses, and other types of ornaments.
THE TELESCOPE above it is set among a lunar landscape with small astronaut figurines, a model Apollo Moon rocket and a Moon globe. My theme on this year's tree is Space, in which I have had an interest in since I was a little boy, wanting to know "what's out there" and if is there life in space.
A SPACE AGE BOYHOOD
I grew up at the start of the Space Age, mesmerized by plans to orbit satellites, and rocket humans to the Moon and Mars. As a child, on TV I watched "Captain Video," "Space Patrol," "Tom Corbett-Space Cadet," "Johnny Jupiter," "Rocky Jones-Space Ranger," "Captain Z-Ro," "Flash Gordon," "Science Fiction Theater," "Watch Mr. Wizard," "Superman," and "Disneyland's Man In Space" series.
ON THE BIG SCREEN, in the movies I saw "Forbidden Planet," "The Day the Earth Stood Stiil," "The Conquest of Space," "Rocketship X-M," "Spaceways," "Destination Moon," "War of he Worlds," "When Worlds Collide," "The Earth Versus the Flying Saucers," "Phantom From Space," "Catwomen of the Moon" and other space movies.
I DREAMED of becoming an astronomer and planned for a life on a mountaintop, like Mount Palomar, staying up many long nights and making discoveries among the stars, perhaps finding with a team of astronomers an abode of life somewhere out there. I read advanced astronomy books and publications, had a refractor telescope, a toy home planetarium, spring-action rocket sets and a metal space station display.
I read newspaper articles about astronomical discoveries, plans to orbit space satellittes and even about flying saucers, always in the news when I was a child. This happened among other interests I had, such as in art, writing, architecture, history, car design, poetry and more.
IN AWE, I watched the first satellites zip through the sky, such as Sputnik and Echo, and clipped and saved newspapers about space exploration and astronomy.
When I grew up, I followed every development and event in the Space Age, astronomy, astro-physics and cosmology, and read every issue, cover to cover, of "Sky and Telescope" and "Astronomy Magazine."
As I completed fifth grade, tests showed that I was already working at a tenth grade level. School authorities suggested to my parents that I skip the sixth through ninth grades and enter tenth grade, right into high school at age 11. It was then decided not to do that, for social development reasons.
STAR DREAMS FALL TO EARTH
To my deep regret, I never became an astronomer. When I was in eighth grade, at age 13, my public grade school unjustly punished me by having my interest in astronomy forbidden and squelched. It was all due an innocent, honest report I made to my classmates on two strange anomolous astronomical observations that I witnessed.
On one night of skywatching with my refractor telescope, studying the stars and learning their precise positions and names or numbers, I saw a lighted disc (with a central light and an outer ring of light) appear above a rooftop across the courtyard, wobbling silently as it moved across the sky, disappearing above my rooftop. I said, "Wow! What was that?" I was observing from my bedroom (my observatory) window on the first floor of a three story building.
On the other night, a few weeks later, I was startled by what appeared to be a meteor sweeping across the sky from above my rooftop, then slowing down quickly and suddenly curving at a sharp 90 degree turn towards the west, and gradually fading from view.
I was familiar with airplane lights, being within a few miles of Newark Airport. With all the newspapers carrying reports of flying saucer sightings at the time, I classiified these two objects as "UFOs," which I found would be a mistake. That's how I described them to the younger kids the schoolyard in the morning when they asked me about my latest skywatching ventures, which had attracted their interest in astronomy.
But within a day or two of mentioning the "UFOs," I was mobbed by many more curious kids in the schoolyard, wanting to know about "the little green men." I saw none, I told them, just two "unknown lights" which I could not identify. Trying to be objectively scientific, I never called them spaceships from other worlds! I described exactly what I saw and I truly felt fascinated by the observations.
This schoolyard "mob scene" upset the principal, who ordered me to sit in his office, alone and with the door locked, as he held a special emergency assembly to tell students that UFOs do not exist and that I was imagining things! He called my parents, suspended me for the remaining two months of eighth grade and sent me to a school psychologist. He ordered that my space books, telescope and toy planetarium be thrown out in the garbage and forced me to learn baseball to ground me, which failed.
It was a harsh, traumatizing lesson in how authorities handle unpopular and unusual issues, and how they need to control and hurt those who are "different." Afterwards, I was shunned and taunted in high school because of the incident. I was called "the Martian" and my natural shyness and innate insecurities forced me to avoid any interaction with my classmates, keeping to myself at all times.
But that did not stop my space interest, over time!
BECOMING A SPACE ACTIVIST
By the early 1980s I became a space activist, joining the National Space Society, the L-5 Society (which then had meetings in New York City that I attended) and the Planetary Society. I also attended many Star Trek Conventions, starting in 1976, because the original series (unlike the current warlike series "Enterprise"!) gave a hopeful vision of space travel.
I MET CARL SAGAN in 1987 at a meeting at New York University sponsored by the peace organization I worked for then (National Cmmitttee for a SANE Nuclear Policy), introducing him to representatives who were our guests from China and who would be his escorts, myself included, when he visited China. (I never went.)
Throughout the 1990s and into the 2000s, as I worked as a newspaper reporter, I kept up an active interest in space, especially in wanting a greater human presence in space and I learned so much more about the prospects of extraterrestrial intelligent life, always a favorite subject.
Three years ago, in early 2001, I began attending meetings of the National Space Society's New York Chapter, where then President Elaine Walker encouraged my activism. I wrote two feature articles for the Home Reporter, the newspaper I work for in Brooklyn, about the chapter.
A COSMIC QUEST REBORN
AS A CHILD, when I dreamed of visits of Santa Claus on Christmas Eve, I also dreamed that my whole adult life would see human settlements on the Moon and Mars by 2000, with humans traveling throughout the solar system as the 21st Century began, and making, perhaps, contact with ET as humanity headed towards the stars.
HUMANITY'S FUTURE is out there in space, and all its dimensions and parallel realities. That is if we survive the harm humanity does to itself and the world it calls its home, and unite as planetary citizens, in the glory of our diversity. Earth is a cradle. The stars, I believe, are our destiny, where humanity will spend most of its life and become "Something Wonderful."
THE STARS which glow on my Space Christmas Tree of 2003 reflect that hope. When humanity's ancestors first looked at and wondered about those stars as they sat among the trees of pre-history, the reach into space began.
MY CHRISTMAS/WINTER SOLSTIST WISH, symbolized by the "Ad Astra" Space Tree, is a fervent hope that we can move out there faster (it will take much more work and commitment!), while there is still ever-more precious time, with ceaseless curiosity, guided by the best in human nature: a sense of awe, creative empowerment, joyous cooperation, and kindness in our hearts, as caretakers in preserving Planet Earth in Peace.
That is our COSMIC QUEST, giving us answers to both the "Spaceflight Challenge" and our Earth's Place in Space.
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Journal Editor Harold Egeln, at the Boone Dog Cafe in Brewster, NY in July 2004, gives Spacers a Vulcan "live long and prosper!" greeting. -- To contact the "SPACESHIP GAIA JOURNAL" EDITOR, write to AstroEcologist@webtv.net
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