John Glenn and Scott Carpenter Appear at National Air & Space Museum, June 23, 2011 July 1, 2011
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Mercury 7 astronauts in 1961. Glenn and Carpenter (front row, right) are the two surviving Mercury astronauts. Both flew in 1962.
Carpenter and Glenn lecture: NASM, June 23, 2011
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iX-ayUlNPMs
Glenn noted how keenly he and Carpenter missed the other five Mercury astronauts, no longer with us. Attending this lecture was a rare privilege. I hope many will take this opportunity to enjoy this discussion, and attend a future lecture by this duo. Both were my heroes when I was growing up.
Highlights:
• Glenn – used manual control for last two orbits, after auto thruster failure. Thus too busy to do much science work.
• Carpenter – ate radioactive food for metabolism studies: Can the body process food while in free-fall? (Yes)
• Glenn – Mercury had no computers aboard
. • Glenn – false indication of loose heat shield led to re-entry with retropack still attached, causing flaming chunks of molten metal to whip past his window. Was it the heat shield coming apart? • Carpenter – the heat shield was designed to be jettisoned when the main chute opened, hanging by straps below a canvas bag that acted as an air cushion when the capsule hit the water. This false indication of the air bag being deployed was what caused flight controllers to worry that Glenn’s heat shield was compromised.
• Carpenter – his reentry was colorful due to all the ionized gases thrown off from the ablating heat shield.
• Carpenter – it was great to see the main parachute open!
• Carpenter – learning is fun whether in space or underwater. Enjoyed his SeaLab experience after Mercury.
• Glenn – George W. Bush allotted NASA no new money for the new Constellation lunar program, expecting it would come from ending shuttle and space station. OMB gave NASA no relief, and no new dollars.
I still treasure my copy of “Americans Into Orbit,” from 1964.
Tom Jones
Did UFOs Visit STS-80 Columbia? April 18, 2011
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Not a flying saucer. This is Wakeshield Facility 3, one of the satellites we launched and retrieved from Columbia on STS-80 during Nov. 1996. Columbia was soaring 220 miles over Mexico's Baja peninsula. (NASA STS080-708-065)
During the week of April 11, 2011, the FBI released some of its investigation records on UFOs. The reports reflect the reality that people do see unexplained phenomena in the sky. Are these sightings evidence for intelligent life elsewhere, or some secret flight testing program?
Much UFO speculation in the past has focused on one of my shuttle missions, STS-80, flown in late 1996. Some have maintained that video shot during this Columbia space shuttle flight provides evidence for unknown objects moving in the night sky. I have reviewed this video (for the first time in 1997), and conclude that it shows commonplace and well-known objects near the shuttle, all of them observed on every shuttle flight. These videos show low-light television camera images of ice particles or man-made debris drifting out of Columbia’s cargo bay, and floating in the vicinity of the shuttle, likely within a few tens of feet of the orbiter.
I have seen these snippets of STS-80 video many times since our flight. These video scenes were recorded by remote control, under ground command, with flight controllers in Houston’s Mission Control operating our low-light TV camera in the cargo bay. As far as I remember, nobody on the crew was looking out the window at these ice crystals or debris particles. Nobody thought anything that our crew observed out the window was of “alien” origin, or something not connected to the shuttle’s routine operations (e.g. a large rotating disk or any such unusual structure). Once you understand what the solar illumination conditions are (orbital twilight, with darkness below and sunlight at our altitude), it’s easy to conclude that the video shows normal small ice and debris particles drifting aimlessly away from the orbiter, with some pieces becoming sunlit as they move out of the shuttle’s shadow. During our science operations, robotic satellite deployments and grapples, and robot arm tests and exercises, we routinely noticed these ice particles and debris catching the brilliant sunlight outside. But these sightings were non-events for us, as we understood what we were seeing completely.
Both the flight crew and Mission Control are always attentive to particles seen outside the windows, or on payload bay cameras. Such sightings could be clues to spacecraft problems, such as a vital piece of equipment that has shaken loose. Those sightings need to be reported ASAP and openly discussed — is it a fuel leak, or a piece off the rudder, or damage to the TPS (tiles), or other bad news? Crewmembers and flight controllers have no reason to ever keep it secret or to keep these discussions off normal radio channels.
Aside from details of specific Defense Department payloads and their deployments, astronauts have no classification regulations or rules preventing anyone from discussing anything they’ve seen or experienced on space flights. No secret non-disclosure signatures, no secret threats, no secret brainwashing–we communicate openly with the public. What we get, you get. What we see that’s unusual, we tell you about.
I have spent many hours gazing out the shuttle windows during my 53 days in orbit, under all lighting and orbiter attitude conditions. The objects seen in the STS-80 videos are ordinary debris particles or ice crystals, some hit by shuttle thruster blasts that cause a change in their motion. Local lighting conditions also change the brightness of some objects as they drift into or out of shadow. I have never seen any evidence in space or on Earth of spacecraft or phenomena not explained by our routine space operations in the shuttle or Space Station programs. My crewmates and I have not seen any evidence for UFOs or spacecraft of “alien” origin or behavior. The STS-80 videos are records of normal space shuttle operations and optical phenomena.
It is regrettable that so many spaceflight-minded young people have their enthusiasms exploited by misinterpretations of such shuttle videos. These inaccurate theories about what the videos show–some naive, some possibly deliberately misleading–waste a great deal of productive energy. Insisting that astronauts have seen alien vehicles is incorrect: a deliberate falsehood. This myth wastes years of healthy curiosity and diverts it to pseudo-scientific wild goose chases, and is a disservice to the fantastic and dedicated work done in orbit by Space Station and shuttle crews, and their support team on Earth. Those still arguing about non-existent UFOs seen by space shuttle crews are wasting their time. Worse, they are misleading young explorers who don’t deserve to miss out on the genuine thrills and wonder of the spaceflight experience, its importance for the advancement of our species, and our understanding of the home planet and our universe.
Tom Jones, PhD
Planetary Scientist
Astronaut on STS-59, -68, -80, and -98
Author of Sky Walking: An Astronaut’s Memoir, and Planetology: Unlocking the Secrets of the Solar System.
Space History, Space Future: Part II September 17, 2010
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Continuing my summary of remarks I made at the Aerospace Industries Association space panel on Sept. 14 on Capitol Hill:
The Pad Abort 1 Orion capsule after its successful launch abort system test flight, May 2010 (NASA)
Commercial Space
The nation requires assured access to the International Space Station, now nearly complete and about to embark on more than a decade of fundamental research and exploration technology testing on the threshold of deep space. The facility has cost the taxpayer over $50 billion, and we must have the means to launch our own astronauts, on our own launch systems, to the ISS as soon as possible. The imminent retirement of the shuttle and our forced reliance on Russian launch systems (Soyuz) calls our leadership in space exploration into question.
I have seen first-hand the professionalism in the NASA/industry team, and in four flights I repeatedly placed my safety in the hands of that team. I have confidence that both elements could execute a program to rapidly field an interim government-run launch system in the near future.
With NASA’s fifty years of human spaceflight experience, earned in close partnership with industry, the agency can do the near-term job of reaching LEO safely and surely. Cost and schedule are an issue, so NASA should move rapidly to acquire a commercial booster capability married to a NASA-procured spacecraft, creating a combination that clearly exceeds shuttle safety standards and that quickly restores our access to low Earth orbit. Solid congressional support, as I discussed in Part I, will be necessary now and throughout the decade.
I believe new commercial space companies will be successful, but their performance, cost, and safety record is unproven. How will they apply NASA’s safety experience and standards to produce a reliable, efficient, and safe system? I believe the surest course to moving NASA out of the LEO crew transport business is to give those firms the chance to demonstrate their skills via cargo delivery to ISS.
NASA should provide strong oversight over the cargo service firms, examining and advising on the test program, the reliability, and the cost. Based on that performance record, the Congress and NASA can decide on when the nation can phase out government-provided crew services to LEO. NASA’s goal should be to do so as soon as the business and safety case can be proven. Our taxpayer investment in ISS is at stake; it is worth protecting from a complete loss of LEO access, or impaired access through foreign rocket providers. I recognize that there will be added cost due to this phased-in approach, but reducing the risk of lost access to space warrants the extra expense. (The cost could have been avoided had proper investments been made five years ago).
A sustainable future direction, coming in Part III…
Space History, Space Future: Part I September 16, 2010
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I spoke on Sept 14. at the Aerospace Industries Association panel discussion on space history and policy on Capitol Hill. Panelists included Buzz Aldrin, Brewster Shaw, and Frank Culbertson. It was a distinct honor to be included with such experienced space fliers in a wide-ranging discussion for congressional staffers and industry representatives.
Buzz Aldrin walks the Sea of Tranquility, July 20,1069 (NASA image by Neil Armstrong)
I will break down my remarks in several installments over the next few days. Here is a brief summary of my first few minutes at the lectern.
My key experiences in deciding on a space career were shaped by the Moon Race of the 1960s. I grew up just two miles from the Martin Baltimore plant where Buzz Aldrin used to fly in to inspect his Titan booster. Buzz also trained underwater for his Gemini 12 spacewalks in mid-1966 at the McDonough School’s swimming pool in Baltimore. The excitement of having the space race come to my hometown certainly shaped my career aspirations. Watching Apollo unfold, I learned our nation could do anything when its citizens worked together.
Progress in space was so rapid that I was worried that I would not make it into the space program (as a test pilot) before NASA reached Mars in the mid-1980s. (I needn’t have worried). My entire education and career were directed toward the goal of qualifying to apply to NASA for the astronaut job. After being turned down twice, I was lucky enough to make it to the Astronaut Corps. From 1990 to 2001, I had the privilege of flying 4 times on U.S. space shuttles.
The shuttle was a superb and reusable science platform during the 1990s, the role it played in 3 of my missions. Human explorers aboard the shuttle materially added to the success of the research efforts aboard on my two flights with Space Radar Lab, and on STS-80′s deployment and retrieval of two science satellites, ORPHEUS-SPAS and Wakeshield.
On my last mission, aboard Atlantis, I assisted my crew in ISS construction, delivering and activating its first science lab, Destiny. My career highlight was executing 3 spacewalks in bringing Destiny, the nerve center of the Station, to life.
During the 1980s and 1990s, as my astronaut career took shape, I saw several NASA grand designs initiated, but then fall flat when not supported by necessary funding. President George H.W. Bush’s Space Exploration Initiative, announced in 1989 and calling for a return to the Moon within a decade, was dismissed by Congress. Within a year the SEI had disappeared from sight. (Our class patch in 1990 included the Moon and Mars as well as a space shuttle; we were hopelessly optimistic.)
In 1993, the ISS program was nearly canceled by the Clinton administration, despite international commitments to our partners. It survived only when recast as a lifeline to the Russian aerospace establishment, to keep it from working with the Iranian regime. Again, a promising program was hobbled by lack of support (and NASA stumbles), taking far longer to execute than its original decadal goal.
During the 1990s, NASA mounted two attempts to replace or supplement the space shuttle. The X-33 Venture Star program and the X-38 Crew Rescue Vehicle were both canceled as technical problems mounted or funds ran short. Congress and the White House were content to let the shuttle soldier on, with discussions of flying it through at least 2020. The Columbia accident in 2003 shook up NASA’s complacency, and both the accident investigation board and the new Vision for Space Exploration projected its retirement by 2010.
Meanwhile, ISS finally reached orbit, with construction beginning in 1998 and continuing through 2010. But long delays in its assembly, and rising costs, left NASA with no budget to do anything but maintain the shuttle and move along with the ISS construction schedule.
In my view, underfunding by the last administration made Constellation fall behind schedule and become increasingly unpopular. At the same time, NASA was given many difficult missions: replace the shuttle after 2010, operate the ISS, build a deep-space exploration vehicle, and create a launch vehicle to make beyond-LEO exploration possible. Neither the Bush administration nor the new Obama direction for NASA gave the agency the funds to accomplish these goals. Today, the slight increase called for in the president’s budget over the next five years is insufficient to meet all of NASA’s “new space” direction.
Having seen many innovative space exploration plans falter in the past 20 years, I have drawn a few lesssons:
i. Promised support by the administration and its OMB should be delivered – not doing so is demoralizing to the nation and to NASA’s team of highly skilled explorers. The Congress has the oversight responsibility to ensure that NASA’s goals are matched by available funding.
ii. Without long-term support from Congress and the administration, NASA cannot attract a new generation of young explorers. Just continuing with the ISS and buying access to space from the Russians is not sufficiently exciting to young students considering an aerospace or high-tech career.
iii. The Augustine Committee last fall explicitly called for a space program worthy of a great nation. The cost of that program is not $19 billion annually, just because that has what historically has been made available. That figure is not based on the facts of a truly ambitious exploration program. Chronic underfunding has been the major cause of NASA’s failure over the past two decades to create beyond-LEO hardware and programs.
We must debate what kind of future in space our nation desires, and decide whether we are willing to spend what it takes to achieve it. I don’t believe 0.5% of our federal budget is a serious commitment to U.S. leadership in space. I doubt if in the next 10 years, that level of investment will take us where we say we want to go.
…coming soon, Part II
Space Shuttle: An Astronaut Looks at its Legacy May 27, 2010
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Atlantis lifts off on its final voyage (perhaps), May 14, 2010. (NASA)
Gunning the BUFF! February 13, 2010
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Tom Jones, combat-ready copilot, 1980
I was a copilot trainee on a B-52 sortie, scheduled for an “Oh-Dark-Thirty” takeoff
time from Carswell AFB in Ft. Worth, TX.
Our B-52D, painted sinister black and camouflage in its post-Vietnam War paint
scheme, crouched on the ramp like an aging Komodo Dragon. The maintenance troops
had filled it up overnight with 240,000 pounds of JP-4, the Air Force’s grade of refined
kerosene jet fuel.
About 30 minutes before takeoff time, I worked with our understudy aircraft
commander trainee (who had about 3 years as a copilot under his belt) to crank up our
eight J-57 turbojets. First we ran up number 4, using high pressure air blown in from a
ground start-cart. Then we used the hot bleed air from #4’s compressor to rev up the
remaining seven engines. Soon we had all eight jets singing their bell-like notes at steady
idle.
My aircraft commander was soon ready to run up the throttles to taxi clear of our
parking spot. One problem: the crew chief and his men yanking free the four thick 4-by-4
inch yellow chocks from our landing gear couldn’t get one of the forward chocks free of
the tires. Seems the refueling with more than a hundred tons of JP-4 overnight had
pinched one chock under the squatting tires. Our crew chief struggled for 20 minutes
with his sidekicks, trying to knock the chock free with blows from one of the other hunks
of yellow lumber. We could hear him huffing with exertion over the intercom. No luck!
Looked like we’d have to shut down and get ourselves backed off the chock by a tug (our
jets had no thrust reversers and so our B-52 could only go forward!).
Finally my pilot had had enough: “Stand clear of that lumber! We’ve got eight
locomotives at our fingertips here, and no damn chock is going to make us miss our
takeoff time!” He grabbed all eight throttles and ran up the power. The engines rumbled
and rocked our wings and fuselage. Couldn’t hear a thing except the roar as a hundred-
thousand pounds of thrust put it to that poor chock. The yellow wood splintered and
exploded as our four-foot tires rolled up and over the now-demolished obstacle! Yeah –
horsepower! It’s the sure solution to many problems.
I’ve looked over the years for another chance to use that line: “Out of the way! I’ve
got eight locomotives at my fingertips!” …but I figured people would think I was bragging.
Still, it’s nice to think that I did once.
I flew this B-52D, now known as Diamond Lil, during the early 1980s while stationed at Carswell AFB, Tx. Now she's at the USAF Academy in Colorado Springs, CO. U.S. Air Force Photo/Mike Kaplan
Astronaut Tom Jones at Leesburg Airport (VA) Open House September 14, 2009
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The EAA's "Aluminum Overcast" B-17 visited Leesburg Airport on Aug. 29, 2009
On August 29 I enjoyed a book signing for Planetology, Hell Hawks!, and Sky Walking at the Leesburg Airport (KJYO) Open House. During the signing, while watching the EAA Boeing B-17 “Aluminum Overcast” rumble in and out on its sightseeing runs, journalist Elizabeth Kreft caught up with me for a brief chat. Ms. Kreft is an Air Force reservist and former public affairs officer for the USAF Thunderbirds.
See the interview here.
And catch up with more Leesburg Airport news (and great flying instruction) at Aviation Adventures, where I do my local flying.
Apollo 11 moonwalk — Glad we cleared that up! July 22, 2009
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"And That's the Way it Was." My neighbor, Jim Telmanowski, shot this 35mm slide image from his TV during the Apollo 11 moonwalk on July 20, 1969.
On the anniversary of the Apollo 11 launch last Thursday, July 16, I talked with Jon Scott of Fox News Channel to discuss the NASA release of enhanced video from the historic Apollo 11 moonwalk. Watch the clip here: Video
An interesting background discussion of the “missing” Apollo 11 moonwalk tapes can be found here.
I do think the new NASA enhanced videos are a significant improvement. I look forward to watching the entire moonwalk once the clean-up work is done. Seeing it online will be much more accessible than commercial DVDs or occasional TV broadcasts.
STS-68 launch pad abort at T-1 second – Video June 28, 2009
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The last shuttle pad abort after main engine ignition was on my second flight, STS-68, on Aug. 18, 1994. My crew (Baker, Wilcutt, Wisoff, Bursch, Smith, and me) was to operate Space Radar Lab 2 for 11 days, and we were keyed to go. In fact, I’d flown SRL-1 just 4 months earlier, in April on STS-59, and I was eager to put my recent experience into practice.
Endeavour's engines reach full thrust just before our RSLS abort, Aug. 18, 1994 (NASA)
At T-6 seconds, Endeavour’s three main engines rumbled into life. I was strapped into my center seat on the middeck, just to the right of classmate Jeff Wisoff, as we felt the orbiter rumble and shake under the thrust of a million pounds of liquid-fueled thrust. Out the hatch window I could see the gantry apparently sway — it was actually Endeavour “twanging” under the thrust. I mentally counted: 5…4…3…2…1…waiting for the giant kick from the boosters’ ignition.
Instead, the Master Alarm blared in our headsets as the three main engines fell silent. Instead of liftoff, we were left swaying atop the orbiter as the launch team announced an RSLS (redundant sequence launch sequencer) abort – an automatic shutdown due to some as-yet unknown problem. Terry Wilcutt declared “Right engine down”, and he and Mike Baker swung into their abort checklists. Jeff and I threw off harness straps and prepared to roll out of our seats, onto the middeck’s back wall (the temporary “floor”) and heave the hatch open for an emergency egress. We might even have to hit the slidewire baskets for an escape to the blast bunker a quarter mile — and a long zip down the slide wire — away.
Launch control soon verified we had no fire and no explosion risk. The engines had shut down at T-1 second, due to an overheating LOX turbopump on SSME #3. Its discharge temperature had violated redline limits; had we launched with that violation, we might have lost an engine right after liftoff, sending us into a very hairy Return to Launch Site abort.
Wisoff and I had readied the hatch for opening, then settled in on intercom to wait for the ground crew to come out and open up from the White Room. We debated (in colorful terms) how long our mission delay would be — “We should have been gone!” Jeff lamented. When the ground crew arrived, I was sitting moresely on my middeck seatback, munching a peanut butter and jelly sandwich the crew quarters staff had packed for orbit. We eventually launched six weeks later, on September 30.
Enjoy the video from Switched.com — and imagine what the experience was like for our families, watching from three miles away with little insight into the orbiter’s condition and safety.
I wrote about this episode in Chapter 8, “The Only Man Available,” in Sky Walking. Not a distinction I relished, but the pad abort does show how well the shuttle’s automatic safety systems do work.
Engines replaced, we finally get underway, September 30, 1994.
Astronaut Speaker Tom Jones — Appearances Summer 2009 June 24, 2009
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Here are a few upcoming events where I’ll be signing Planetology, Hell Hawks!, and other books:
- June 27 — Barnes & Noble, Webster, TX — 7 pm — “Planetology” book signing
- July 6 — Glenn L. Martin Maryland Aviation Museum — Baltimore, MD — “Future Space” – http://www.marylandaviationmuseum.org/events/index.html
- Sep. 16 — Linda Hall Library of Science and Technology — Kansas City — “Planetology” – http://space.lindahall.org/lecture3.shtml
- Sep. 22 — Air Force Academy Society of Washington, DC — Arlington, VA — “Hell Hawks!” –
http://www.afasw.org/ - Sep. 23 — National Museum of the U.S. Air Force — Dayton, OH — “Hell Hawks!” –
http://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/Calendar/default.aspx - Oct. 9 — Healthcare Financial Management Association — Atlantic City, NJ — “Sky Walking & Teamwork”
Tom Jones speaks at the Maryland Science Center, June 2009 (APL)
For more details about a speaking event with astronaut Tom Jones, contact his speakers bureau, or visit www.AstronautTomJones.com
