Albert Einstein
Old Grove Rd.
Nassau Point
Peconic, Long Island
August 2nd 1939
F.D. Roosevelt
President of the United States
White House
Washington, D.C.
Sir:
Some recent work by E.Fermi and L. Szilard, which has been communicated to me in manuscript, leads me to expect that the element uranium may be turned into a new and important source of energy in the immediate future. Certain aspects of the situation which has arisen seem
to call for watchfulness and, if necessary, quick action on the part of the Administration. I believe therefore that it is my duty to bring to your attention the following facts and recommendations:
In the course of the last four months it has been made probable through the work of Joliot in France as well as Fermi and Szilard in America - that it may become possible to set up a nuclear chain reaction in a large mass of uranium,by which vast amounts of power and large quantities of new radium-like elements would be generated. Now it appears almost certain that this could be achieved in the immediate future.
In August of 2009 I travelled across the United States, stopping overnight at a place called Albuquerque, New Mexico (just down the road from Roswell) and read a copy of this letter hanging on a wall of the National museum of Nuclear Science and History. This letter written almost a month to the day before the onset of World War II and eventually read by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in October of 1939, was the spark that initiated one of the largest scientific endeavors ever attempted anywhere in the world.
The Manhattan Project was the codename for a project conducted during World War II to develop the first atomic bomb.
...the Manhattan Project eventually employed more than 130,000 people
...Project research took place at over thirty sites across the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom.
The second part of Einsteins letter dealt with the prospective threat of a nuclear weapon being developed, as difficult as this subject is for some people, it was a reality of the time. An agressive regime which had built an incredible war machine had been working on nuclear science technology which could lead to a Weapon of Mass Destruction being unleashed on the world. So at the insistence of its most senior scientists, the President of The United States took the advice seriously and so began an enormous international collaborative research and development effort which led to some of the greatest breakthroughs of the 20th century.
Nuclear Power
In the United States, where Fermi and Szilard had both emigrated, this led to the creation of the first man-made reactor, known as Chicago Pile-1, which achieved criticality on December 2, 1942
After World War II, the fear that reactor research would encourage the rapid spread of nuclear weapons and technology, combined with what many scientists thought would be a long road of development, created a situation in which the government attempted to keep reactor research under strict government control and classification. In addition, most reactor research centered on purely military purposes. Actually, there were no secrets to the technology. There was an immediate arms and development race when the United States military refused to follow the advice of its own scientific community to form an international cooperative to share information and control nuclear materials. By 2006, things have come full circle with the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (see below.)
X-Ray
Radiation Therapy
MedicineToday, about one-third of all procedures used in modern hospitals involve radiation or radioactivity.
Industrial Use of Nuclear Technology
Space - Whether we need a satellite to track hurricanes on earth, run a space station in orbit, send spaceships to explore the moons of Jupiter or send people to Mars - these missions require large amounts of power and knowledge of the effects of natural radiation in space.
So in the search for answers to one scientific question, the world was able to discover many which have helped shape our modern world. Our scientists bringing about such change that our lives, overwhelmingly, have improved. Listening to the science community, heeding their advice, making them a partner, made this possible.
There was a quotation of Albert Einsteins which I particularly liked as well which was:
Imagination is more important than knowledge...
One of the scientists responsible for the development of nuclear technology credits a science fiction writer for some of the inspiration to pursue this area of research, which although it lead to a technology which could decimate the people of the Earth, what has been the experience so far, with the uses mentioned above, is the treatment and diagnosis of disease amongst other things. Many people over many years have been saved because of the work these scientists did.
H.G. Wells included air-dropped "atomic bombs" in his 1914 novel The World Set Free. Leó Szilárd later commented that this story influenced his later research into this subject.
The Nuclear Museum itself has (IMO) an incredible display on man's search for our energy needs. It doesn't just cover Nuclear power but Hydroelectric, Solar energy, fossil fuels - coal oil and natural gas, Wind Power as well as dealing with efficiency measures and recycling. The great thing about it is it is up to date information with displays from PNM and triple junction solar cells, write ups on the current areas of Generation IV nuclear reactor research including:
Very High Temperature Reactor
Super Critical Water Reactor
Molten Salt Reactor - Also Molten Boron and Zirconium
Gas-cooled fast reactor
Sodium Cooled Fast Reactor
Lead Cooled Fast Reactor
But what may turn out to be the most impressive thing of all of this museum, this celebration of technological and scientific advances and the men and women who helped develop these things, which had been installed out the front, possibly because it is not a museum piece but a sign of the future, was this item below.
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NASA Kennedy Space Center
I had tried to time my trip to Orlando to coincide with the launch of one of the modules for the International Space Centre, the one carrying the C.O.L.B.E.R.T (Combined Operational Load Bearing External Resistance Treadmill, STS-128. The launch was due on the 17th August, so I'd allowed 3 days in Orlando, hoping that even if the schedule slipped, I'd have until the 20th before it took off. I mean this was my one and only trip to the US after all, so to see something like a launch would be something one does not ever forget.
Unfortunately leading up to the launch date there were a number of fairly big storm warnings and the launch was delayed by a week. Still I was booked to stay over at Merritt Island, so a visit to the Kennedy Space Centre is one of the few things of interest out that way.
A timeline of development
Space exploration would not have been possible without the development of the vehicle capable of freeing a payload from the gravitational pull of the Earth and breaking free of our atmosphere.
Early rocket technology in America was being developed by Robert H. Goddard who worked to develop the first liquid fueled rocket in 1926. It was in Germany though that the writings in 1923 of Dr. Hermann Oberth spurred the formation of many small rocket technological societies, of which Goddard was involved in the US and which led to this technology attracting the interest of capable and motivated people.
A man by the name of Wernher Von Braun working with Oberth in 1930, moved on from this association to eventually develop the V-2 rocket, which used alcohol and liquid oxygen as a fuel and which could carry a 1,650 pound (~75kG) pay load 225 miles. This rocket was used extensively in World War II against the allied forces and in the bombardment of England.
It was following World War II that the US military sent a group of US scientists to Germany in Operation Paperclip, to "collect information and equipment related to German rocket progress" as well as bring back many of the German scientists who had been working on this technology to America to work on rocket science there.
Wernher Von Braun worked on the American intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) program before joining NASA, where he served as director of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center and the chief architect of the Saturn V launch vehicle, the superbooster that propelled the Apollo spacecraft to the Moon. In the words of NASA, he is "without doubt, the greatest rocket scientist in history. His crowning achievement ... was to lead the development of the Saturn V booster rocket that helped land the first men on the Moon in July 1969.
In his 20s and early 30s, von Braun was the central figure in Germany's pre-war rocket development program, responsible for the design and realization of the deadly V-2 combat rocket during World War II. After the war, he and some of his rocket team were taken to the United States as part of the then-secret Operation Paperclip. In 1955, ten years after entering the country, von Braun became a naturalized U.S. citizen.
August 1953 - PGM-11 First Redstone Rocket launched
October 4 1957 - Russians launch Sputnik the worlds first orbiting satellite
November 3, 1957 - USSR launch the first animal, Laika the dog into space
December 6, 1957 - Vanguard rocket TV-3 exploded a few seconds after lift-off. "This was accordingly viewed, at least in the eye of the general public, as a major embarrassment and a disaster for the U.S. space program."
January 31, 1958 Payload of Juno 1 Rocket was the first US orbiting satellite
This success turned the focus of national attention onto Von Braun's team of scientists for the success of being responsible for this remarkable achievement. Going on to be involved with numerous other successes.
October 1, 1958 - National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) became operational
April 12, 1961 - Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin becomes the first man in space in Vostok 1
Project Mercury was the first human spaceflight program of the United States. It ran from 1959 through 1963 with the goal of putting a human in orbit around the Earth.
The program was basically designed to determine if man could survive in Space.
1964 - 1966 Project Gemini was the second human spaceflight program of NASA, the civilian space agency of the United States government.
This program was a pre-cursor to landing man on the moon
There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as yet. Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves the best of all mankind, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation many never come again. But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas?
We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon... (interrupted by applause) we choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.
President John F Kennedy, 12 September 1962.
July 20, 1969, Apollo 11, NASA's Apollo Program landed the first humans on Earth's moon.
A history of launch vehicles in the Kennedy Space Center Rocket Garden next to one of the incredibly complex engines which had to be imagined, designed, built and tested for these ships to take flight
The development of US rockets from yesterday through to today
And compartive at scale models
The various stages of the Saturn V launch vehicle
Apollo/Saturn V
Saturn V First Stage (S-IC)
Boeing involved in the manufacture
Saturn V Second Stage (S-II)
North American Rockwell responsible for the structure
Rocketdyne for the F-1 Engine
Saturn Instrument Unit (IU)
IBM manufactured
Saturn third Stage (S-IVB)
Built by McDonnel Douglas
Saturn V Lunar Module (LM)
Manufactured by the Grumman Corporation
Saturn Command Module (CM)
North American Rockwell
Saturn Service Module (SM)
North American Rockwell
Story Musgrave talking about the shuttle
It is not without risk or sacrifice that great achievements are made and this bronze plaque remembers those who have lost their lives so that others may continue pursuing this dream
A summary
I'd not sought this information out. My visit to the Nuclear Museum was to fill in time before a meeting, the Kennedy Space Center was to be an add on had I seen the launch. But this history of the Nuclear and Space programs in the United States was fascinating. I'd heard the names of Oppenheimer before and Einstein, but did not know the role they played. The co-operation between the science community, the military, the political and business communities along with the US university or tertiary education sector to make these incredible things happen, just amaze me. That these efforts could not have been accomplished without drawing on collective expertise of people from a country America had just fought and some American allies, all the more astounding. To me it seems this must have been an age of discovery, where the possibilities for young people incredible, discovering new things, having to find solutions to complex problems which did not exist before they tried to do these things, surely an exciting time to be alive. Knowing that most everyone was working to the same goal. The mind boggles at the complexity and ability for so many different groups to work coherently and co-operatively towards such noble causes. Fostering this a strength the United States once were the very best in the world at.
Boeing, IBM, Rockwell, McDonnel Douglas, Grumman, Rocketdyne working with NASA, working with Astronauts from the Airforce, Navy, working with politicians to gain funding and research labs with Universities to prepare students and conduct important research on specialist areas, parts of an almighty puzzle.
And it was young people, long enough out of College/University but not old enough to become too cynical or jaded with the world who were tasked with using that imagination which Einstein spoke about above, who created so many of these new things which had never been necessary before people decided to go into space.
America’s young people will rise to the challenge if given the opportunity – if called upon to join a cause larger than themselves. And we’ve got evidence. The average age in NASA’s mission control during the Apollo 17 mission was just 26. I know that young people today are ready to tackle the grand challenges of this century.