Long ago, seemingly just after the earth cooled, Pangaea separated, and the wheel and fire were still novel intellectual property, I was a student at a tiny, rural school in the red clay hills of the Arkansas Ozarks. It was the early 1970s, a decade now best remembered for a multitude of social and cultural disasters – disco, the CB radio craze, polyester leisure suits, platform shoes, the tawdry spectacle of the Watergate scandal, and the ignominious end to the futile Vietnam War.
The 1970s also marked the waning days of the space race, as the U.S. ramped down investments in the Apollo program, with the last lunar landing occurring in 1972. I was and still am bedazzled by its technological tour de force, one requiring the concerted effort of the planet’s richest nation-state, as it stretched its hands into the 21st century and pulled back just enough technology to realize an age-old dream.
The Siren Call of Science
Perhaps among the extreme minority of children who were excited when the big three television networks preempted Saturday morning cartoons with live coverage of Project Mercury, Gemini, and finally, Apollo launches from Cape Canaveral, I heard the siren call of science at an early age. In the first grade, I traded my tools of the trade – Crayola crayons and rounded children’s’ scissors – for my compatriot’s Mercury capsule pencil sharpener, having no doubt that I had made a savvy deal. (It was gold, just like the one on the right,
which I recently found on eBay.) Any child could color inside the lines and cut construction paper; I wanted to go to a magic place, one where dreams could take flight on the wings of science and technology.
I even rearranged the woodpile outside our backdoor to create a spaceship, with just enough room for my trusty robotic sidekick and me, as we explored the cosmos in my childhood imagination. There was wonder out there beyond the sky; I could see it every night when I looked up at the stars. Humoring me, my parents were careful not to destroy my spaceship as they fetched wood for our house’s old wood stove, which heated one room of our ramshackle old house. (See A Taste of Sherbet.)
Throughout, I watched the space launches and the commentary on my parents and grandparents aging analog, black-and-white televisions – at least when they worked. Of all the network commentators, Jules Bergman (ABC) was my favorite, as I sensed a fellow aficionado and true believer hidden behind the professional façade. That we could even receive multiple television channels was itself a recent miracle; in a fit of profligate spending, my grandfather had purchased an antenna rotator, which relieved us from climbing on the roof to change channels. (See From Broadcast to Narrowcast: Finding Signal in the Noise.)
I did not know it then, but I had go fever, appreciative of the incremental technological steps, but anxious for the hoped for denouement, the first crewed landing on the moon. When July 20, 1969 finally arrived, I watched coverage of the Apollo 11 lunar landing late into the night, even as my parents prepared for bed and work the next day, leaving me enthralled by the gray glow of the television. (Although the Eagle lunar module landed at 3:17pm CT that Sunday afternoon, Neil Armstrong first stepped onto the lunar surface at 9:56pm CT.) I knew scientific history was being made, and although the Arkansas backwoods was far from the action, I was determined to see every possible bit of it. (See That’s One Small Step for {a} Man.)
I watched all the other landings too, excited by the precision navigation, the longer excursions enabled by the lunar rover, and the associated geology. I was disappointed when, with public interest lagging, the broadcast networks began limiting their coverage. Sadly, reflecting its origins in the Cold War, only the last mission, Apollo 17, included a working scientist, Harrison Schmitt, among its crew.
Seemingly, in the blink of an eye, it was over. We left the keys in the ignition of the mighty Saturn V booster, and we walked away, satisfied that we had beaten the USSR to the moon. The historian in me understands the geopolitical context of the decision, and the twin financial strains of the space race and the Vietnam War. (It was guns or butter, but not both, as the economists so idiomatically describe it.)
The scientist in me also recognizes the higher scientific return on investment (ROI) from planetary and deep space probes, as Pioneer, Voyager, Viking, Cassini and so many others aptly demonstrated. Yet, the poet in me still yearns for the excitement of human exploration that so inspired me as a young boy. I still want “to boldly go,” split infinitives be damned! (See Science: It’s About the Wide-Eyed Wonder.)
NASA Comes to My Little Town
Although NASA’s budgets were already shrinking by the time Apollo 11 landed on the moon, the agency still had a vibrant K-12 outreach program, which sent science demonstrations out to schools across the country. Eventually, NASA, in the form of a middle-aged man in a small van, found itself in the Ozarks backwoods of Mammoth Spring, Arkansas, my hometown. That afternoon, the teachers gathered the restive students in the school cafetorium (cafeteria cum auditorium) for a rare science demonstration.
There, the NASA representative performed a parlor trick, one still popular at children’s science museums. He dipped a piece of flexible garden hose in a dewar of liquid nitrogen, then snapped the now frozen hose apart. The demonstration, complete with a small fog of evaporating nitrogen, elicited the expected “ohhs and ahhs” from the assembled students.
I had read about dewars in that cornucopia that was the library, but I had never seen one. (See Libraries: Arms Too Short to Feed the Mind.) Geek that I was (and am), I found myself thinking not about material properties at very low temperatures, fascinating though that topic was, but about how long a small dewar could keep nitrogen in a liquid state. We were, my grandfather often said, “a fer piece” from any gas liquefaction facilities. (The answer, for those of you keeping score at home, is a few days to weeks for a portable dewar.)
The NASA visitor also recounted the history of the Apollo program, illustrating launch, docking, and descent procedures using 3-D models of the Saturn V, the Command and Service Module (CSM), and the Lunar Module (LM). As he did so, I watched the student faces as the already distant memory of the lunar landings suddenly took life in their minds.
With well-practiced mien, he also revealed that the number of earthly visitors to the moon was an odd, rather than an even number. With a smile, he explained that in addition to the twelve humans, a bacterium had been found on the Surveyor 3 camera that the Apollo 12 astronauts had retrieved and returned to earth. (This report of Streptococcus mitis is now suspected to be due to contamination by the Apollo astronauts, rather than a hitchhiker on a not fully sterilized Surveyor probe.)
After the demonstration ended, and as the other students beat a noisy exit for the school buses, I approached the cafetorium stage with questions. I asked about the dewar and about the more obscure, uprated Saturn 1B model on display, one used for testing prototypes and validating procedures for lunar-bound hardware. I also talked to him about Skylab and the prospects for future explorations, even as I helped carry the last of his materials back to the van.
When Dreams Die on the Pad
Looking back, I now know this was the first – and likely only – science demonstration most of my fellow Arkansas students would ever see. Doomed by inadequate educational investment to a lifetime of poorly paid minimum wage jobs, their options were few, unduly constrained by the unfortunate circumstances of their birth and mine. Yet for just a few moments, our NASA visitor had shown all of us a world beyond our reach, one where the life of the mind was real and the extraordinary was more than a dream, but a practical possibility. (See The Hopes of Parents and the Dreams of Children.)
My Arkansas little town and its school was and still is dirt poor, just like its students and their parents. At the time, the school’s annual budget for science consumables was indistinguishable from zero, and its one “laboratory,” such as it was, consisted of a few ancient Bunsen burners, a handful of Erlenmeyer flasks, and some rusting chemical containers – all much older than I was.
A single teacher valiantly taught science to grades seven through twelve. Overworked and underpaid, he rarely had either the means or the time to create hands-on science experiments or demonstrations, though I helped him try whenever I could. In me, he saw a younger version of himself, one whose scientific dreams were not yet extinguished by harsh reality, and he was determined that I have the chance he had lost. For that, I will forever be grateful. (See Remembering Joel: A Teacher’s Impact and A Feeling for the Code.)
The Mobile Museum Takes Flight
Almost forty years later, when I returned to academia from Microsoft Research, again became a professor and also Vice President for Research and Economic Development at the University of Iowa, my portfolio included the Office of the State Archeologist and the university’s Museum of Natural History. Like most such university organizations, they were woefully underfunded, though they regularly hosted fieldtrips from nearby K-12 schools, highlighting both the state’s geological history and its ancient flora and fauna.
The university’s student fieldtrip catchment was constrained by teacher pain thresholds – how long they are willing to sit on a school bus with hyperactive students. The experimental data suggested the radius of the typical teacher pain threshold was roughly forty miles, centered on Iowa City.
Sadly, because Iowa is an agrarian state of ninety-nine counties and many small, rural schools, that forty-mile radius excluded a large fraction of the state’s K-12 students. Why ninety-nine counties, you ask? Because each county seat needed to be within a day’s buggy ride for the population it served, an anachronism in today’s globally interconnected world.
As I talked to the museum director, the state archeologist, and my senior staff, I could not help but remember the anticipation I felt when NASA visited my little Arkansas town, and how, just for a moment, faces shining with excitement, my fellow students were transfixed by a world of scientific wonder. I wanted to recapture that magic for a new generation and expand our reach statewide.
If the children could not come to us, then we would go to them! I then sketched an idea that had been gestating since my days as director of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois. We could build a “magic bus,” one filled with hands-on scientific exhibits, and take it to all the little towns across the state.
With this animating idea, we quickly sketched the attributes of the magic bus:
- Replaceable external graphics – a new skin each year,
- Hands on exhibits of natural history and STEM discoveries, refreshed annually,
- University-wide competitions for new ideas and exhibits,
- A self-contained vehicle, not dependent on local infrastructure,
- Capable of hosting outdoor lectures under a rollout canopy if needed, and
- Operated by student docents who would both explain the exhibits and tell their own STEM stories.
In just a few months, thanks to my wonderful staff, the mobile museum took shape. We contracted with Winnebago in Iowa, for a custom vehicle with an open interior, exterior power plugs, and rollout canopy. We then designed rugged interior exhibits and displays, ones capable of withstanding the pounding from rural roads and the excited fingers of young children.
This MObile MUseum, affectionately called “MoMu,” was soon traveling the highways and byways of rural Iowa, visiting schools, libraries, and county fairs, bringing science and hands-on exhibits to over 40,000 visitors a year. I will forever be grateful to the senior staff who made MoMu a successful reality, most notably, John Doershuk, Rich Hichwa, Jennifer Lassner, Cheryl Reardon, Ann Ricketts, and Trina Roberts.
MoMu was also a valuable learning endeavor for our student docents, giving them practical experience in explaining science and an exposure to a broad cross-section of Iowa’s population. Although we always sought to be respectful of personal perspectives, we never hid the scientific evidence, even if some might take exception.
One of the student docents told a story of an elderly woman who visited the mobile museum. She carefully inspected each element of the exhibit on the extinct megafauna of ice age Iowa (notably Megalonyx jeffersonii, a giant ground sloth) and read every sign. On exit, she turned to the student, smiled, and said, “Thank you so much for coming. I am so pleased the university cares enough to come to our little town. Please do not ever bring evolution to our town again!” In response, the student docent could only smile and say, “Thank you for visiting.”
Just as NASA’s roving science demonstrations inspired my fellow Arkansas students and me, the University of Iowa mobile museum was a visible presence in the lives of Iowans everywhere, a beacon of scientific possibility and experiential science education shining in the rural cornfields. Coming full circle to space exploration, MoMu also highlighted the University of Iowa’s important contributions to space exploration. These included James Van Allen’s discovery of the now eponymously named radiation belts, and insights from the indefatigable Don Gurnett’s instruments on the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 probes, which have crossed the heliopause and are now the manmade objects furthest from the earth.
Alas, the MoMu is no more, sacrificed on the altar of financial exigencies after my departure, an unfortunate victim of ongoing budget cuts, a phenomenon all too common across public education. I am saddened, because MoMu made a difference in the lives of rural Iowans.(See Missing Talent, Missing Opportunities, and Losing Ground.)
Requiem for the Future
Our country is deeply divided, politically, economically, and culturally, riven with angst and fear of the future. Many are now questioning the value of education as a public good, a transformative force that lifts generations out of poverty, powers our knowledge economy, anchors our democracy, and, most importantly of all, gives life to the dreams of children.
I still recall my own joy when NASA came to my small town, and I saw it again with MoMu, when the faces of young children gleamed with wonder as science came to life in their own hands. I believe every child is born a scientist, filled with curiosity about the world, anxious to learn its secrets. Nature is egalitarian, treating all who seek to understand it the same, giving up its workings to those who ask clear and precise questions. Ah, but such wondrous secrets they are!
Hear me well. The childlike wonder lives in us all. Listen to the siren call. Every child deserves a pre-paid ticket for the magic bus, one bound for the future of their dreams.
Coda
As I write this, it has been over fifty years since the last crewed lunar landing of the Apollo program, well over the event horizon of most humans now living on this planet. For many years, I was not sure I would live long enough to see us return to the moon or, perhaps, explore Mars, but I now have hope.
Technological progress has finally put returning humankind to the moon within the financial reach of centi-billionaires such as Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, as they prod NASA’s now conservative bureaucracy to move with greater alacrity. (See Signing Up, Making A Difference: Shackleton, Musk, and Computing.) As I watch SpaceX test the Starship super heavy launch vehicle and Starship spacecraft, and Blue Origin develop New Glenn, it reminds me of my childhood, when the future was pregnant with possibilities.
As President Kennedy said in the 1960s, we do these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard. In the difficulty and the challenge lie the opportunities; they demand the very best of us – harnessing our insatiable curiosity, marshalling our concerted intellectual talent, and fueling our sense of adventure. Most importantly, they inspire us and our children with dreams of what could be. (See Dreaming Things That Never Were.)
Despite our manifest challenges, you can still color me hopeful, so grab your crayons.
Recent Comments