Huntsville – RDZ Photography

Huntsville, Alabama – May 2019 – Marshall Space Flight Center

History, Nature, Sciences, Transportation

The George C Marshall Space Flight Center is NASA’s largest complex, where rocketry and propulsion are researched and developed.

Tours are available with proper ID as it is located on Redstone Arsenal. The tour departs from the U.S. Space and Rocket Center Museum via a NASA bus.

The administration building is where Werner Von Braun and others made space travel possible.

Most manufacturing companies have displays of their products at their corporate headquarters and NASA is no different, only theirs are far more interesting than others.

A display of 3 of the engines greet visitors to the building.

While most people think ‘Houston’ when it comes to NASA Mission Control in reality there are three – Houston, Kennedy Space Center in Florida for ‘Launch Control’, and Huntsville for ‘Payload Control’.

Within this building are the staff that manages the day to day workings on the International Space Station.

The lobby of the building have models of the ISS and an astronaut at work.

A commonly used expression throughout NASA are ‘racks’. Each rack of equipment has specific roles, and teams of engineers are responsible for their rack.

The Payload Operations Center was amazingly small given the critical nature of their work. Just a handful of people are monitoring and managing the effort.

The structures that support the testing of rockets during development are known as ‘stands’. This is likely the most famous stand in the history of rocket development – The Redstone Interim Test Stand.

It was built in 1953 for just $25,000 out of materials scavenged from around the arsenal. They had to do it this way because the government wouldn’t give them any more money than that.

A total of 362 static rocket tests were completed here. Their budget was so low they took railroad tank cars that had been used to transport chemicals – cleaned them and buried them 300′ away from the test stand for their bunker to monitor the tests from.

Nearby you could see some of the much larger, much more expensive newer test stands.

One of the biggest challenges in long duration space flight is water. Because humans need water to survive, they had to come up with a way to conserve water in many ways one would not expect.

They have developed systems to recycle urine and washing water onboard that result in potable water.

The system is held in these three racks. The rotating distillation unit separate liquid from gases, then is sent to another unit for solid removals before the liquid go through a number of filtration’s that remove micro organisms.

They continue to research and develop even more efficient units, and the men’s room has a special urinal that they collect samples from for further testing – so I contributed to science.

As we rode around the complex we passed a number of interesting structures including this small, but very long wind tunnel.

Our final stop was the rocket park where they have examples of the various rockets used in space travel over the years.

While the museum portion was interesting, the additional tour of the Marshall Space Flight Center was by far the best part of the day.

Huntsville, Alabama – May 2019 – U.S. Space and Rocket Center

History, Sciences, Transportation

The city of Huntsville, Alabama is located in the northern Alabama hills. For many years it was a cotton producing town like many others nearby. All that changed in the 1940s when the military started using a nearby arsenal for rocket development.

After the war many German engineers were relocated here and together with American engineers began developing rockets. The most famous of these engineers was Werner von Braun. This effort has lead to Huntsville’s nickname – The Rocket City.

Fortunately not all of the efforts in rocket development was for the military. This technology has allowed man to explore space.

As you approach the museum you can’t help but notice the massive Saturn V rocket.

Inside the museum there is a plethora of space related artifacts including Russian Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin’s space suit.

The museum showcases the development of the equipment used in space flight including these early prototypes for gloves and boots.

One of the few items you can touch, a replica of the Apollo Lunar Rover is on display for inspection. The seats felt like cheap lawn chairs but served their purpose for the astronauts in their bulky space suits.

Apollo 13’s challenges have been made famous by Hollywood, but Huntsville has a couple of the components from the real space craft.

The museum has a couple of the early EVA (Extravehicular Activity) units.

Another large display has mock ups of the International Space Station.

When the space shuttle program was decommissioned there was a fierce competition amongst museums for the remaining shuttles. Huntsville did not get one of the four that actually flew in space, but they did get Pathfinder’.

This full scale simulator was built here in Huntsville and was used in the development of the facilities required for shuttle launches.

While the shuttle itself is a mock up, the fuel tanks and boosters are very much real.

A closer view of the Saturn V shows it’s massive size, with a height of 363′.

This mock up of the lunar lander on the moon’s surface is located outside near a couple of amusement rides. The rides are there to entertain the thousands of tweens and teens who come every year for Space Camp.

The outdoor exhibits are showing the wear of being in northern Alabama weather for the last 30-40 years.

The second major building on the campus is the Davidson Center for Space Exploration. It was designed to house a horizontal Saturn V rocket, as well as numerous other larger items, including other engines.

Skylab was the first space station used, having been launched in the 1970s. After just 6 years it was discontinued and eventually fell back to earth. While most of it was destroyed during re-entry, this large piece was recovered in the desert in Western Australia.

The Davidson Center has more examples of space suits.

Their prized possession is the Apollo 16 command module. This view shows the damage from re-entry that the space capsules incur.

The NASA program has had 3 major accidents with loss of life. The first of these was during the development of Apollo 1. A cabin fire during launch rehearsal killed the three astronauts, Gus Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chaffee.

A memorial and tribute is on display in the Davidson Center to the three.

Outside the Davidson Center are large concrete pieces that commemorate each of the Apollo flights.

In addition the wall that surrounds the courtyard have plaques describing each of the flights.

The U.S. Space and Rocket Center has a great collection of space related items. While it is very busy with ‘Space Campers’, it is a must see for any space travel or history fan.

Huntsville, Alabama – May 2019 – Chinese Lanterns at the Botanical Gardens

Art, Festival

On a recent road trip we found ourselves in Huntsville, Alabama for one night, with our hotel about a mile from the botanical gardens. While looking for something to do that evening we discovered that the Chinese Lanterns were in town at the aforementioned gardens.

We arrived about 45 minutes before sundown to check out the gardens. The fountain was catching the setting sun just right to make a rainbow.

The family of geese were heading home for the evening.

As the sun was setting we stopped by the stage to watch the martial arts demonstration.

Now that the sun had mostly set, the lanterns were vivid in their illumination.

The setting in the botanical garden provided a more interesting setting than we were used to, with ponds to display (and reflect) the lanterns.

There was a large display of one we hadn’t previously seen.

The main display on a pond was fantastic.

Huntsville is a much smaller city that Columbus, yet they put on a nice show.

We usually see the lanterns around Christmas in Ohio when it is very cold. It was nice to check them out in summer attire.

Grant, Alabama – May 2019 – Cathedral Caverns

Uncategorized

Not far from Huntsville, Alabama is the amazing natural wonder of Cathedral Caverns. For the last 20 years the state of Alabama has owned the cave and operated it as a state park.

The entrance is said to be one of the world’s widest entrance to a ‘commercial cave’ at 25′ tall and 128′ wide.

This column has been named ‘Goliath’, one of the largest stalagmites in the world measuring 45′ high and 243′ in circumference. To get an idea of the size, note the walkway railing in the lower left corner of the photo compared to Goliath.

The cave is filled with amazing stalagmites and stalactites.

For many years the cave was owned and operated privately. Note the railing on the left side of the photo – that was the path that the original owners had put in. When the state took it over they built a nice walkway with no stairs that runs 3/4 of a mile back into the cave complex, allowing all to have the chance to experience it.