Have you been wondering why we’ve had Cirque du Soleil’s new show, TOTEM, all over our social media pages? It “traces the fascinating journey of the human species from its original amphibian state to its ultimate desire to fly…Somewhere between science and legend, TOTEM explores the ties that bind Man to other species, his dreams and his infinite potential.” Being an air & space museum, of course we’re all over anything to do with human flight! TOTEM is amazing and the acrobatics involved are reminiscent of the stunts that barnstormers used to pull. If you can take your eyes off the costumes, set, or the feats of strength and agility, look out for these acts displaying flight and space:

Act: Hoops Dancer (Part 1) – A Native American dancer performs a narrative dance, adding hoops to his routine as he goes. At the end of his performance, his five hoops are stretched out over his arms like wings. Humans such as Leonardo daVinci and the Wright Brothers were moved by birds, but even the less famous among us have been looking to the skies for inspiration as well.

Act: Rings Trio – It is the classic love story: boys see girl, boys compete against each other to win the love of girl, girl…shows them up? And there are rings involved? Maybe it isn’t such a classic love story after all, but the acrobatics in the summer skies above a beach are breath-taking, and the fact that one of the men has wings on his hi-tops makes it even better.

Act: Manipulation – The scientist has always held a valuable role throughout history, and the character in this show is equally as important. We see him throughout the show trying to make sense of the universe and nature, but he really shines in this act. He experiments with a series of metal bowls to understand the solar system, and upon looking for further explanation, he juggles balls in a large cone so he can further comprehend the orbit of the planets.

Act: Roller Skates – Remember the exercise centrifuge in Space: A Journey to our Future? This act is the same idea: a wedding ceremony is performed on top of a drum, but the couple is on roller skates, and the drum is less than two meters in diameter. The couple spins and dances around the drum at extremely high speeds in a beautiful display of centrifugal force.

Act: Russian Bars – Acrobats that look like aliens are launched into the air by their fellow acrobats and Russian bars. Not only do they jump from one bar to another, they are flung into the air and into space, hoping to defy gravity and do what humans have dreamed of for centuries: fly like the birds.

TOTEM is playing until May 27 at the Del Mar Fairgrounds, so you only have a week and a half to see this spectacular show! If you are a member with us, you can receive 20% off select performances. For more details, please go to http://sandiegoairandspace.org/calendar/story.php?id=193.

Enjoy the show!

As part of the annual “Green Skills for Life” competition, the San Diego Air & Space Museum (SDASM) and Ford Motor Company Fund asked San Diego County students the following question: What is one change or action you think you and others could do in your everyday lives in order to make the world a greener place? This year’s competition used both the medium of artwork and the engaging format of online videos. We received hundreds of wonderful entries which made it especially challenging for our judges to pick only four winning entries. Below are this year’s four Green Skills for Life winning entries (2 pieces of art and 2 videos):

Art:

Athena Tsai - 10 years old

Shauna Jellison - 17 years old

Video:

Rohan Marsters – 10 years old

Ulysse Carion – 15 years old

A new question was introduced this year, which asked how the United States military could reduce their carbon bootprint for a greener earth. This competition also used artwork and online videos. Below are the winners for the “Military Goes Green” category.

Art:

Paxton Stolper - 9 years old

Maya Lakshman - 15 years old

Video:

Joshua Marsters – 15 years old

Make sure to watch the competition section of our website or sign up for our e-mail list for all the current information on our competitions. Congratulations to the 2011 winners!

As part of the Centennial of Naval Aviation, our Curtiss A-1 Triad took to the waters on Saturday, 12 February 2011. Below is a video of the flight (created by Sik Productions) and a short recap by our curator, Terry Brennan. Pictures of the Saturday event can be seen on our Flickr Photostream.

After two months of preparation by our skilled volunteer craftsmen at our Gillespie Field Annex, the Museum’s Curtiss A-1 Triad was transported to Naval Air Station North Island for assembly and water operations on San Diego Bay during the Centennial of Naval Aviation (CoNA) celebration on Saturday, 12 February 2011. We ran the engine for the first time on Wednesday evening and finally launched the aircraft into the bay on Thursday afternoon. Windy conditions and choppy water challenged our pilot Mike Steele, but we were successful in carrying out the first taxi operations and recovering the aircraft afterward. On Friday morning with a dozen or more descendents of Lt. TG Ellyson (Naval Aviator number one) on hand to watch, we once again launched the aircraft into the bay, this time undisturbed by wind and waves, for an effortless number of passes on the water and a routine recovery. Saturday dawned clear and calm promising another ideal day for the CoNA airshow and for our high speed taxi runs. With what had by now become routine precision, following engine start on the first pull, the aircraft slipped into the bay and performed flawlessly. Mike eased the stick back slightly to reduce the amount of spray in his face from the splashing hull only to become airborne for a few brief seconds. He skillfully placed the aircraft back on the water and returned once again for a text book recovery, but not before exciting the crowd with an ever so brief aerial adventure. Once washed and hangared the Triad became a virtual center of attraction for curious aviation fans and history junkies alike who hung around until the day’s last light.

Yesterday was an exciting day for the Museum and space enthusiasts in general. In conjunction with the opening of our newest exhibition, SPACE: A Journey To Our Future, astronaut and author, Buzz Aldrin, visited the Museum to greet fans (a lot of them) and sign copies of his newest book, Magnificent Desolation.

Much to our surprise, people started showing up at 9 in the morning to score the first spot in line. Once 10 o’clock rolled around, the line to purchase tickets stretched out to the parking lot. By the time the event started at 1:00 pm, the book signing line stretched from the World War II gallery, out the side of the building, and then wrapped around Starlight Bowl!

Buzz showed his gratitude to his fans by staying an extra hour to make sure that everyone who purchased a book would get it signed. His wrist must have ached because our gift shop sold over 900 books!

He returned later in the evening to the Museum to help kick off San Diego Museum Month (pictures of that to come soon).

Now if only we can convince him to get his other astronaut friends to visit the Museum!

To see pictures of the book signing event, click here.

The Union Tribune also snapped a few great pictures.

To watch one of the local media interviews, click here.

In case you missed it this morning (or were still asleep), Reuben from San Diego 6 stopped by to take a look at SPACE: A Journey To Our Future. Below is the video:

[Update] Video changed to a link to prevent the autoplay. To see the video, click here.

With the help of a special guest, the Museum will open SPACE: A Journey To Our Future tomorrow morning. For those of you who cannot wait, here are a few pictures of the exhibition:

Boxes of Magnificent Desolation

Our basement is no longer magnificently desolate thanks to the arrival of the boxes shown above. Inside are copies of Buzz Aldrin’s latest book, Magnificent Desolation.

Magnificent Desolation

If time permits and Aldrin’s hand does not cramp, he will sign every one of these on Tuesday, 1 February, from 1 pm to 2:30 pm. You can find more information on the book signing here.

Best of all, the preparations for the event came with a moon-walking chocolate astronaut. Sadly, we lost contact with him minutes after his arrival in our office.

Chocolate Astronaut

Apollo 11 Space Pen

Sometimes, no matter how hard a museum tries, some myths will work there way into an artifact’s description. Such is the case of the mythic space pen and how, by completing an electrical circuit, enabled the Apollo 11 astronauts to return safely to Earth. This story was attributed to the space pen we have on display next to the Apollo 9 command module.

Luckily for us, two Apollo 11 astronauts, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, while at the Museum saw the space pen and told our curators the real story. Gordon Permann, Registrar, has written a new description of the space pen using the real (as described by the astronaut himself, Buzz Aldrin) “space pen” story:

Sometimes a long-held notion can be so strongly believed that history takes hold of it as the truth. One such case is the story of our bent, soot-covered Fisher Space Pen, on display in the Rotunda adjacent to the Apollo 9 “Gumdrop” Command Module.

Most enthusiasts and casual students of the US Space Program are aware of the heart of the legend – marooned on the surface of the moon by a broken ignition switch, Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong used good old-fashioned Yankee ingenuity to defeat the balky circuit breaker, firing the return motor to propel themselves back into space for the journey home. The smart ‘fix’ was to wedge a pen into the switch housing, completing the circuit and enabling a safe return.

The world held its breath for the astronauts, but on the ground, an advertising writer knew gold when he saw it. The Fisher Space Pen company immediately began selling their unique brand of writing instruments with the  proud mention that their product had ‘brought the astronauts home’. And so, a legend was born – a persistent and flawed legend, but at its core a story that many can recite today, that Buzz Aldrin used a Fisher Space Pen to avert catastrophe. The truth is a little different, but with the passage of time, the myth is slowly overtaking the actual events.

On that momentous day in 1969, Astronaut Buzz Aldrin knew he had a problem – looking at the moon dust collected on the floor of the Lunar Module after he returned from his first walk on the moon, Aldrin noted a small object that was out-of-place. Turning it over in his hand, he realized it was the top of a circuit breaker for the engine that would launch their vehicle back into space. After notifying “CAPCOM” back at Houston, Buzz went about finding a solution, even as a small army of engineers back on Earth sprang into action. While they worked their slide rules and pored over manuals, Aldrin dug around until he came up with a felt-tip marker – in a moment of inspiration, he realized that the non-conductive felt tip would close the contact without shorting it, or causing a spark. By the time a ‘fix’ was radioed up to the spacecraft on the moon, Buzz Aldrin announced that they were back in business.

What the reader will note here is that the astronaut involved made a conscious choice when deciding which pen to use, and he chose the Dura felt-tip instead of the Fisher Space Pen. A small correction, but even today, people familiar with the “broken circuit breaker story” almost invariably credit the Fisher Space Pen with the successful return of Apollo 11. In fact, the legend has taken hold to the point that today, even other astronauts repeat the error when discussing “THE” pen.

In the 1970s, the San Diego Aerospace Museum held several items loaned from NASA, including a dull silver pen with a small card, explaining how it was used aboard the historic first moon landing. The fire that ravaged our first facility destroyed 98% of the artifacts and holdings of the museum and everything was feared lost in the first hours after the building collapsed. In the days that followed, volunteers used metal detectors and sifted the ash and debris, hoping to recover some small amount of our losses. From out of the ash, someone found a soot-blackened pen from the area where we originally displayed NASA items, and it was with some relief that we were able to notify NASA that “THE” pen was not lost.

In 2009, Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong were present at our museum. Al Valdes, Curator for Collections, shared the story of the long journey taken by that particular Space Pen and was quickly corrected by the Apollo 11 crew, who removed any question as to which instrument was used on their return flight. Within months, another event in our museum brought a similar meeting between staff and astronauts – and would you believe it, one of the most senior men in the US space program saw the Fisher Space Pen on display and announced, “That’s the pen that got Neil and Buzz home from the moon!”

The Curtiss A-1 Triad has returned to the Museum, but unfortunately we will need a very, very small pilot due to a shrink ray accident!

Actually, John Randle, who is an expert model maker and long time museum volunteer, borrowed blueprints and a few pictures of the Curtiss A-1 Triad and hand-crafted a beautiful model.

You can stop by early next year to see it on display in the Rotunda as part of the 100^th anniversary of Naval Aviation celebration, but to tide you over for now, below are a few photos of this masterpiece:

Observation Deck

Want to enjoy a nice lunch on our Observation Deck, with its million dollar view of Downtown, this holiday season? Well our Flight Path Grill will have special holiday hours to make sure it will happen:

December 18-23 – 11:00-3:30 pm
December 24-25 – CLOSED
December 26 – January 2 – 11:00-3:30 pm

You can check out the menu by clicking here. Remember to print off our Grill’s coupon before you visit.