United Air Lines' "Original Eight" female flight attendants.

Upon completion of the class, Church worked the Oakland to Chicago route.  She served only eighteen months when an automobile accident grounded her. After her recovery she returned to nursing, and her stint as a stewardess was over.  However, her idea transformed the airline industry.  Did you know that the first stewardesses were required to have nursing experience? Qualifications for flight attendants have changed a lot over the years.  At one time airlines required stewardesses to have an appearance  “just below Hollywood standards.” Today, some would argue that the glamor is gone.  What do you think?

1960's flight attendant in a uniform designed by Emilio Pucci. The plastic bubble helmet, to protect hairdos on windy tarmacs, was an integral part of the Pucci-designed uniforms.

Try out this fun online checklist and see if you could have qualified to be a flight attendant in the early 1950s.

To explore more about the history of commercial aviation, check out our online version of the exhibition America by Air.

“There is still a newness about air travel, and, though statistics demonstrate its safety, the psychological effect of having a girl on board is enormous.”

-  Comment about the addition of stewardesses from an airline magazine, 1935

Tim Grove is Chief of Education at the National Air and Space Museum’s Mall building.

I actually had a speaking part in The Magic of Flight (1986), my second and last turn before the IMAX camera. Directed by Greg  MacGillivray, this film was produced for the National Museum of Naval Aviation. When MacGillvray first asked me to fly to his studio in Laguna Beach to describe what the Wright brothers had accomplished and how, I said thanks, but no thanks. The idea of me as a “talking head” with a face forty feet tall was not all that appealing. My boss at the time, Don Engen, a retired admiral and great friend of the folks in Pensacola, thought otherwise. If that’s what the Navy wanted, he was there to see that they got it. So, off I flew to Orange County. In the end it was not so bad. At our annual Air & Scare celebration at the Udvar-Hazy Center a few years ago, I was innocently standing in front of some display cases explaining things to our visitors, all clad in Halloween costumes. I noticed a four year old kid standing in front of me, staring up at my face. His mother walked up and apologized, explaining that they had a home video copy of The Magic of Flight, which her son had watched over and over.  “Go ahead,” his mother said, “show him.” The kid immediately began to explain the three axes of flight – pitch, role and yaw, just as I had done it in the film. Hey, as Andy Warhol opined, everybody deserves their fifteen minutes of fame.

Tom D. Crouch is the senior curator in the aeronautics division of the National Air and Space Museum.

The M2-F2 research craft looked more like a boat than an aircraft. NASA was experimenting with wingless flight for a more controlled, more heat-resistant reentry from space. A lifting body derives lift from the shape of the fuselage, rounded on the bottom and flatter on top. Instead of wings, it has vertical stabilizer fins to control its attitude.

The aluminum M2-F2 had an XLR-11 rocket engine. It was carried aloft under the wing of a B-52 bomber to 13,716 m (45,000 ft) altitude. The engine then ignited to carry the craft to 18,288-21,336 m (60,000-70,000 ft) for a gliding descent to a landing. These flights demonstrated that a pilot could fly a wingless vehicle back from space to land like an airplane.

M2-F2 After the Crash in 1967

There was only one serious accident in 12 years of lifting body flights. On its 16^th test flight both the M2-F2 and pilot Bruce Peterson were nearly destroyed as the craft flew out of control and then plowed into the ground at 250 miles per hour, tumbling over and over before coming to rest. Peterson had several surgeries but no bionic implants to repair his facial injuries, fractured skull, and loss of one eye. This accident inspired a novel, made-for-television movies, and the weekly prime-time television program.

M2-F3 Lifting Body, Hanging in Space Hall at the National Air and Space Museum

The M2-F2 was rebuilt as the M2-F3 with a large third vertical stabilizer between the fins. It flew 27 successful test flights in 1970-1972, many of them the same profile as planned for the space shuttle.  This lifting body research helped to demonstrate that landing without power was safe and thus landing engines were not needed on the shuttle.  The M2-F3 (the resurrected M2-F2) hangs in Space Hall in the National Air and Space Museum.

Valerie Neal is in her 20^th year as the Shuttle-era human spaceflight curator in the National Air and Space Museum’s Space History Division.

This idea was first broached by scientists Manfred E. Clynes and Nathan S. Kline in a 1960 NASA study. They remarked: “Altering man’s bodily functions to meet the requirements of extraterrestrial environments would be more logical than providing an earthly environment for him in space.”  They proposed a variety of modifications that would allow humans to withstand radiation, the absence of atmospheric oxygen, and other hazards of space. They coined the term “cyborg” to describe this adaptation.

The classic image of humans and robots working together is depicted in this NASA artwork. Sojourner, the Mars Pathfinder rover named after former slave and famous abolitionist Sojourner Truth, is visited many years after its mission by a descendant of its namesake, in this artist’s rendering. Like the human, Sojourner the rover paved the way for those that followed. This image was produced for NASA by Pat Rawling.

Since that time, NASA has refrained from serious consideration of the ideas offered by Clynes and Kline, although a few studies in the 1960s investigated these possibilities. But what of the future, especially the distant future? To date, human presence in space has consisted of what might be characterized as extended camping trips, often a week or more but rarely exceeding a half year in length.  Yet space advocates continue to propose far lengthier stays, from planetary outposts to solar system colonization.

If colonization of the solar system, and the rest of the galaxy, is truly desirable, will it be done by Homo sapiens?  In undertaking this cosmic venture, humans might change, especially if very long periods of time are involved.  Humans born and raised on extraterrestrial locations would change naturally in response to different conditions.  Given advances in biotechnology, others might reengineer themselves.  The current debate over the superiority of humans versus robots in space could disappear in the presence of such alterations.

A provocative possibility appears in the rapid rise of biotechnology, suggesting that humans may become cyborgs through the application of sophisticated machinery in ways at least initially unrelated to space exploration. In many ways we are already there, with millions of people enjoying a better quality of life, or in some cases life itself, through the incorporation of pacemakers, joint and limb replacements, cochlear hearing implants, artificial organs, and a potential list of even more sophisticated enhancements. Future possibilities are astonishing.

How might we remake the human body to more effectively meet the rigors of space exploration? Skeptics may scoff at this possibility as nothing more than bioscience fiction, but space exploration was itself fiction in the truest sense of the word less than 75 years ago. Advances in biotechnology could take place with similar speed.

NASA’s Robonaut (foreground) is a step forward in terms of human/machine interaction. Here it performs a mock weld while Ames Research Center's K10 robot assists two EVA crew inspecting a previously welded seam.

The result, given sufficient time, may be the emergence of a new age of space exploration. Technological developments now beginning to take place might permit a true merger—humans equipped with robotic parts or machines possessing sentient qualities. In that sense, humans and robots would explore space together—really together.

The implications of such developments for the future of space exploration are fascinating.  They are made more interesting when one considers the degree to which humans might change during the millions of years available to colonize the galaxy. Who knows what derivations of the human form could emerge? Such developments would alter the traditional debate over space exploration in ways that provide a new paradigm quite different than the one casting humans with all of their biological limitations into the extraterrestrial realm. Such developments might make space travel more attainable, though in unconventional ways.

So, is there a Borg in our future? Possibly; even probably. In fact, we may already be there with all of the biotechnological enhancements now routinely offered to human beings. This possibility, moving as it does away from the necessity of maintaining organic life under Earth-like conditions throughout the cosmos, offers a fascinating option for space travel. If we did not require Earth-like conditions to survive, our ability to colonize strikingly diverse non-Earth-like worlds would expand. Many spheres, including those within the local solar system not currently suitable for human occupation, might prove acceptable. Is it possible that once cyborgs emerge—and undertake space travel—they will shoulder the burden of carrying the essence of humanity to other worlds? Resistance may be futile, if the Borg really are us. But they need not be feared.

Roger D. Launius is senior curator in the Space History Division of the National Air and Space Museum. Howard E. McCurdy is professor of public affairs at the American University,Washington, D.C. They pubished Robots in Space: Technology, Evolution, and Interplanetary Travel (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), from which the ideas here are taken.

Hindenburg poster by Jupp Wiertz

The superlatives tend to pile up pretty quickly when it comes to the rigid airship Hindenburg, the pride of the Deutsche Zeppelin-Reederei line. It was the longest aircraft of any type at 245 meters (803 feet). Its 16 gas cells held up to 200,000 cubic meters (7,062,900 cubic feet) of hydrogen gas. Four 1050 hp Daimler-Benz DB 602 diesel motors sped the mighty airship along at speeds up to 135km/h (85 mph) with a maximum range of 14,000km (8,700 miles). Up to 70 passengers traveled in unrivaled luxury, served by a crew of from 40 to 72; gourmet meals (although the final meal served on board was a bit sketchy); comfortable (though small) cabins with running water; and a smoking lounge, where one could enjoy a Hindenburg Cocktail or two. And, of course, the famous Blüthner aluminum piano, covered in pigskin, for the passengers’ pleasure. Think of that, the next time you’re stuffed into a tiny airline seat and stuck on a runway for a couple of hours.

American Airlines-Hindenburg baggage label

It’s a shame, though, that the Hindenburg is remembered today primarily for its tragic final flight.  On May 6, 1937, it arrived at its American terminus, the Lakehurst Naval Air Station, at the end of the first flight of the 1937 season. Vented hydrogen ignited (although there are many other theories), and the mighty airship crashed and burned. There were 36 passengers and 61 crew on board; 13 passengers and 22 crew died, as did one member of the ground crew. But it wasn’t history’s worst airship disaster; the US Navy’s USS Akron lost 73 of its crew of 76 when it crashed off the New Jersey coast on April 4, 1933. What we remember, though, are the horrifying photographs of the Hindenburg engulfed in flames, and the breathless narration of the disaster by Herb Morrison, a reporter for the Chicago radio station WLS. But there are happier stories concerning the Hindenburg.

Garland Fulton’s ticket for the October 9, 1936 “Millionaires’ Flight”

On October 9, 1936, the Deutsche Zeppelin-Reederei and the Standard Oil Company invited a party of influential businessmen, politicians, and military men aboard the Hindenburg for a ten-hour flight over the fall foliage of New England. Dubbed “The Millionaires’ Flight,” its passengers included heavy hitters like Juan Trippe of Pan American and the ace Eddie Rickenbacker, who headed Eastern Airlines at the time. Also among the passengers was Commander Garland Fulton, U.S. Navy, chief of the Lighter than Air Section of the Navy’s Bureau of Aeronautics. That’s his ticket for the flight, shown above, preserved among his papers, which are held by the Museum’s Archives Division. As the VIPs enjoyed a superb luncheon, far below on the ground in the wilds of Connecticut, a little girl was about to have the experience of a lifetime. The little girl, who grew up to become an author and opera translator and a dear friend, was Anne “Cookie” Chotzinoff Grossman. Here’s her account, as published in Robert Hedin’s The Zeppelin Reader:

In September or October of 1936, I was six years old, at school in Ridgefield, Connecticut, in those days a small, exceedingly rural town. I was a shy little girl, always trailing behind my 10-year-old brother Blair. One day we were outside during the lunch recess, when a shadow crossed the schoolyard. We all looked up; something huge was floating by. Blair said excitedly, “Hey, that’s the Hindenburg! Let’s follow it!” I hadn’t the faintest idea what he was talking about or what a Hindenburg was, but whenever Blair said “follow”, I followed; so I ran behind him and his friends, trying hard to keep up. We ran across fields and brooks and over stone walls, trying to keep the airship in sight. Blair finally admitted defeat – the Hindenburg was faster than we were – and we made our way back to the school, very late and very dirty, to face angry teachers. I don’t remember what Blair’s punishment was, but I was made to stand at the blackboard and write “I will not follow the Hindenburg” 100 times.

That’s the way I prefer to remember the airship Hindenburg: sailing through a crisp autumn day over New England, with a gang of school kids in hot pursuit…

Model of the Hindenburg on display in the National Mall Building.

There are Hindenburg artifacts to see at the Museum. For instance, the  stupendous model of the airship (shown above), used in the 1975 Universal film The Hindenburg starring George C. Scott and Anne Bancroft, which hovers over the entrance to the store in the National Mall Building.

The Bucker Bu-133C Jungmeister at the Udvar-Hazy Center

We even have an actual Hindenburg passenger on display at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center – the Museum’s Bücker Bü-133C Jungmeister was shipped to the United States in August 1936 on the Hindenburg by its owner, the Romanian aerobatic pilot Alexandru Papană for the Cleveland Air Races.

Photograph by Dane Penland

Also at the Udvar-Hazy Center, in the Lighter than Air exhibit case, is a fragment of one of Hindenburg’s aluminum girders, a ladder, a fragment of the airship’s doped fabric, and, shown above, a cup and a saucer, possibly used on the Millionaires’ Flight, survivors of the Hindenburg’s final flight, but smudged by the smoke and flames that signaled the end of passenger airship travel.

Film of the Hindenburg in flight, and the destruction of the airship at Lakehurst, May 6, 1937. National Air and Space Museum Archives Division film VB 01246.

Allan Janus is a museum specialist in the Museum’s Archives Division.

Artwork for the IMAX movie, To Fly! Credit: MacGillivray Freeman Films

Many people (including me) thought To Fly was the first IMAX film to be shown in the United States. However, subsequent research has turned up some interesting facts about IMAX’s origins and history.  IMAX is probably the most significant and most successful in a long line of large format films that began with Twentieth Century Fox’s Fox Grandeur, the first 70 mm motion picture format, introduced in 1929. (The Big Trail in 1930, directed by Raoul Walsh and starring John Wayne in his first major role, was the first film made in Fox Grandeur.) Another wide-screen process, Cinerama, which used multiple projectors to achieve its effects, appeared in 1952. (The first feature film, This Is Cinerama, thrilled audiences with its wild point-of-view roller coaster ride). The 1950s also saw such large formats as Twentieth Century Fox’s Cinemascope (The Robe was the first Cinemascope production in 1953), Paramount’s Vista Vision (White Christmas in 1954 was the first in that process) both of which widened the standard 35 mm image, and Todd-AO, a 70 mm process (Oklahoma in 1955 and Around the World in Eight Days in 1956 were the first in that process).

The history of IMAX goes back to 1967, when two films shown at Montreal Expo—Roman Kroitor’s In the Labyrinth and Graeme Ferguson’s Man and the Polar Regions—attempted to use multiple screen, multiple projection techniques, but ran into numerous technical problems. Undaunted, Kroiter and Ferguson founded a company, originally called “Multiscreen” (later changed to IMAX when multiple screen projection became impractical). The process they developed used a single projector, a single camera, and a single large format screen. The first IMAX film was titled Tiger Child, and was shown at Expo ’70 in Osaka, Japan. In 1971, the first IMAX theater system was set up in Toronto at Ontario Place. At Expo ’74 in Spokane, Washington, a very large IMAX format screen (300 ft. x 213 ft,) was installed in the U.S. Pavilion. Although this screen was temporary, a permanent IMAX screen replaced it in what is now the Riverfront Park IMAX Theater. In 1973, an IMAX Dome opened at the Reuben H. Fleet Science Center in San Diego, California. IMAX theaters now exist in all parts of the world.

Despite the fact that the National Air and Space Museum’s IMAX theater was not the first in the U.S., its significance in introducing a vast audience to the IMAX film format cannot be denied. Over the years, the National Air and Space Museum has shown such aerospace-related IMAX films as Blue Planet (1990), Destiny in Space (1994), Cosmic Voyage (1996), Mission to Mir (1997), and Space Station (2002). Hubble 3D, one of the current attractions at the Lockheed Martin IMAX Theater, is characteristic of how far the IMAX process has come in its development. At one time thought to be impractical for major motion pictures, IMAX has now become commonplace. Although as of this writing, no feature film has been shot entirely in IMAX (some, like Michael Bay’s Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, made in 2009, have some scenes shot in IMAX) many have been or are being digitally remastered to be shown in IMAX theaters in IMAX and IMAX 3D.

Dominick A. Pisano is a curator in the Aeronautics Division of the National Air and Space Museum

Flight crew from US Airways flight 1549. From left to right: Chesley Sullenberger, Doreen Welsh, Donna Dent, Sheila Dail and Jeffrey Skiles.

The crew of flight 1549 will be participating in an online conference this Wednesday, April 28^th, where they will be taking your questions about this heroic accomplishment. Please register now to join the conversation.

Bob Van der Linden is the chair of the Aeronautics Division of the National Air and Space Museum.

Gene Kranz (center) and Chris Kraft (right) at the flight operations director console in the mission operations control room of JSC's mission control center.

Last July, Kraft spoke at the Museum along with the three Apollo 11 astronauts: Michael Collins, Neil Armstrong, and Edwin Aldrin, on the occasion of the 40^th anniversary of the historic first human journey to the Moon’s surface.

In his remarks, Kraft reminded the audience how the success of Apollo depended on fundamental research done many years earlier at NASA’s predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, at Langley Field, Virginia, a few miles from the town where Kraft grew up. He began working there in 1945, after graduating from college, and joined the Space Task Group shortly after the Soviet Union orbited Sputnik, when NACA was being absorbed into the newly-created NASA. It was from those humble beginnings that the triumphs of America’s space program emerged.

Dr. Chris Kraft will be participating in a live, online educational conference on Wednesday, April 28th.  Registration for the event is now open.

Paul Ceruzzi is a curator specializing in aerospace computing and electronics in the Division of Space History at the National Air and Space Museum.

Some of the many paths to this profession include education and training in graphic design, architecture, interior design, fine arts, industrial design, theater set design and interactive media. You don’t have to be an expert in any of these areas (I’m not), but what helps is having a very broad range of interests. For example, here are a few of mine:

• Art: I majored in Fine Arts (Graphics) and have a master’s in Theater Set Design. Art is my first love.
• Objects: Objects tell powerful stories and mean different things to different people. I’m a collector.
• History: The stories, events and people associated with objects truly fascinate me. I can’t get enough!
• Math: I use basic math to make detailed structural drawings of exhibits and build scale models. Fun!
• Culture: I love learning about different cultures. When I work on an exhibition design, I keep in mind the diverse ages, nationalities and levels of education of our visitors.
• Writing: The words in an exhibit interpret the objects and tell the related stories. I enjoy digging into the content, reading up on the subject and thinking of ways to make it accessible to a general audience.
• Science: I discovered how much I like science when I worked on an exhibition on the physics of flight. That’s another great thing about working in a museum: you learn so much with every new project!

Jenna Kush posing in front of her banner

Each year, my GWU students select a topic related to the content of an exhibition currently under development. They conduct research, write label scripts, select photographs and design 3- by 5-foot  banners to be displayed temporarily in the Museum. They work with museum curators, designers, educators, archivists and a script editor throughout the semester to design and refine their banners. Most have no prior knowledge of the assigned topic, so the project is a true reflection, in miniature, of the exhibit design process.

This year’s student exhibit topic is satellite navigation technology. The 20 graduate students researched the history of satellite navigation, the cultural implications of social uses of GPS technology and the science of satellite operations and launch methods. They wrote exhibit labels in language that would be universally accessible, selected photographs of important objects to tell their stories, used basic math to scan and scale the photographs for correct resolution and used art skills to create an attractive layout design for their final banners. The results speak for themselves. The student banners are worthy of display in the world’s most visited museum and you can see them in the National Air and Space Museum’s “West End” gallery, right next to the flight simulator room.

Corina Miclea posing in front of her banner

The George Washington University student banners will be on display through May 2010 and possibly longer. Come check them out!

Barbara Brennan is Chair of Exhibits Design at the National Air and Space Museum.

New Mars Section of the Exploring the Planets Gallery at the National Air and Space Museum

Visitors will find fantastically detailed images of the surface taken from orbit by the HiRISE camera, a full-scale model of a Mars Exploration Rover, instruments used by the Viking spacecraft to make the first searches for life, views inside the polar caps provided by radar sensors, a watch that runs on “Martian time,” and a chunk of rock that landed in Antarctica after being blasted from the surface of Mars by an impact. The new exhibit puts all this information together to reveal Mars as a complex and still-puzzling world that holds valuable clues to the development of our own planet and those around other stars.

We welcome comments on the new exhibit. Please note that installation of a few items, such as the Mars rover model, have been delayed due to the weather-related problems at the Museum’s storage facility.

Bruce Campbell is a geologist in the Center for Earth and Planetary Studies at the National Museum of Air and Space