Apollo 11 Anniversary Library Exhibit:
Oklahoma Space Alliance chapter of the National Space Society put together an exhibit commemorating the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing. Photographs of this exhibit are below. The display ran through the month of July. The Stafford Museum in Weatherford, Oklahoma have offered to take the exhibit now that it's expired, although they have not yet seen the exhibit except on-line. Description of the July exhibit follows:
We have two display cases full of books contributed by Oklahoma Space Alliance members. The first hosts several books on the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs, including The Right Stuff and books by Buzz Aldrin and Eugene Cernan (The Last Man on the Moon). The second includes more deep-space books, including Robert Zubrin’s books on Mars, and The Grand Tour.
Above these, we have a globe of the Earth, and a Moon scaled to the size of the Earth globe. These are hung from the ceiling with a cord between them corresponding to the distance between the Earth and the Moon, and labels corresponding to the heights of the Space Station and geosynchronous orbit. (We probably need a label for the Earth-Moon L-1 point, but available space wouldn’t allow for L-2, L-4, or L-5. L-3’s on the far side of the Earth from the Moon and about the same distance from Earth, and is useless anyway.)
Tom contributed his wooden model of the Space Shuttle. This is displayed beside the entranceway from the children’s stacks at the Library.
The remainder of the display consists of posters and articles on poster board. Instead of taping the articles to the poster board, we used a spray adhesive which allows for the repositioning of articles. This turned out to work very well, and when I checked back on July 11, everything was still sticking where it was supposed to. I highly recommend using this kind of spray adhesive in our future exhibits.
The posters all together cover a forty-foot by six foot series of wall panels to which the poster board is attached by tacks. To the far left is a poster to inform people that Oklahoma Space Alliance put up the display and who we are. Next are three posters. Two of these are the front and back of a poster of 100 defining moments of the first fifty years in space. The back explains what the pictures on the front represent. (Unfortunately the explanations are listed at right angles to the pictures, so you have to search to get the one you want.) The third poster displays the major rockets that have taken things into orbit.
Next to this is the 50 years in Space display, which consists of sixty articles from Space News which originally gave an event a week. (Since there are sixty articles, some weeks get double treatment.) We arranged them in chronological order going from the formation of the United States’ first aeronautics research agency (NACA, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, the parent of NASA) on March 3, 1915, to the thirtieth anniversary of the Voyager probes. Under the beginning of this is the NSS display board.
A series of articles covering one event a week doesn’t allow for those calendar weeks during which more than one event occurred, so Syd did a series of nineteen articles to fill in the gaps. These are:
Luna 1, the first deep space probe that (unintentionally) flew by the Moon and went into solar orbit. [The Luna probes are also called Lunik.]
Luna 2, the first probe to crash into the Moon
Luna 3, the first probe to photograph (very grainily) the dark side of the moon.
Ham the Chimp, the first ape in space.
Mariner 2, the first successful Venus probe.
Alexey Leonov doing the first space walk.
Mariner 4, the first successful Mars probe.
Vladimir Komarov, the first man to die on a space mission. (Apollo 1 is covered in a weekly report.)
The first space rendezvous (Gemini 6 and Gemini 7)
Luna 9, the first soft landing on the Moon
The first space docking (Gemini 8 and the Agena Target Vehicle)
Luna 10, the spacecraft to orbit the Moon
The Apollo 8 mission, the first manned mission to orbit the Moon
Mariner 10, the first Mercury probe.
The first launch of Space Shuttle Columbia
The destruction of the Space Shuttle Challenger
The first Space Station crew.
The destruction of the Space Shuttle Columbia
All of these, including the 50 Years in Space Articles, had relevant pictures and information on related missions where appropriate.
The historical articles are divided into sections, “How Did We Get There” and “What Has Happened Since.” Below the end of the 50 years in Space are articles on the Space Station and current space policy, and beside it are the 2008 space report, articles on commercial space, “New Space,” and “Many Nations Enter Space,” handling major international space programs from China, India, the European Space Agency, and Japan, and smaller programs such as Israel, Iran, Sweden, Dubai and Nigeria.
The next section is “You Too Can Participate,” which includes sections on what you can do if you are a student, a millionaire, just want to watch, etc.
Next is “What May Come Next,” which includes Return to the Moon, Mars missions, and Constellation.
Finally we have a 3-D poster of Mars, with two pairs of 3-D glasses to view them.
Syd went by on July 11 to take pictures of the exhibit.
Here are some photographs from Oklahoma Space Alliance's exhibit commemorating the 40th Anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing on the Moon.
This is the display case of the future space events, including several books on the colonization of Mars. There is a second display case of books covering the early space program and the Apollo missions.
This is the left end of the wall display. The rocket on the table to the far left is a wooden model of the space shuttle. Next to that is a poster are pictures of 100 evocative moments concerning space. The poster below it explains what the pictures signify. The second poster on the top shows orbital aunch vehicles going back to Sputnik 1 . The 50 Years in Space begins here, with "How Did We Get There" covering March 3, 1915 (the formation of NACA, the predecessor of NASA) through July 20, 1969. (Neil Armstrong walks on Moon.) The NSS is in the middle on the bottom. Bottom right are eight of the nineteen articles concerning major events not covered in the 50 Years in Space (which was limited to one headline per week for sixty weeks.
This is the right end of the 50 years in space, showing the last 18 of the 60 articles, part of "What Has Happened Since" Apollo 11. . Below that are articles on the International Space Station and contemporary American space policy.
This is the right end of the exhibit. At the very left is the end of "Many Nations Enter Space," which covers nations from China and India, who have extensive space programs, to Nigeria and Dubai, who have more limited ambitions. Next to that are four panels showing how "You Too Can Participate," for example, by boarding a commercial launch vehicle, or simply observing. The "What Could Come Next" Section is future space, including the Constellation program and missions to Mars. At the far right is a 3D poster of Martian scenes and a couple of 3-D glasses for observing them.