A curiosity as big as Houbolt's
Joliet Area Historical Museum to host interactive, commemorative event
The Joliet Area Historical Museum is hosting "Journey Into History" from noon to 4 p.m. Friday.
Although the event honors the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing this month, as well as Joliet native John C. Houbolt's contribution to the landing, "Journey Into History" may also spark something more.
A curiosity like Houbolt's.
Heather Bigeck, museum curator, said Houbolt was wonderfully curious, especially regarding flight, and had a quest for knowledge that went "above and beyond."
This led to Houbolt's believe that the lunar orbit rendezvous concept (LOR) was the best method for traveling to the moon.
Bigeck said Houbolt once put wings on a baby buggy to see if it could fly and experimented with flight by jumping out of a hay loft holding an umbrella. He was always pondering, "How does this work?"
Sometimes we lose that curiosity as we mature and we go onto higher education and learning," Bigeck said. "He took that curiosity and turned it into his career."
Features of the "Journey Into History" event include STEM projects, crafts, stories and a workshop by Eryn Blaser of the Old Joliet Prison Burnt District Artists showing participants how to turn junk into art.
Attendees may also view the 500-square-foot, two-story exhibit "The Soaring Achievements of John C. Houbolt."
According to the museum website, exhibit features " interactive panels, diagrams and maps, audio-visuals, flat-screen narratives and period dioramas" tell the story of Houbolt's vision, the Apollo 11 mission and the moon landing.
"It's very visually stunning," Bigeck said. "It's an example how to create a large story exhibit in a small story space."
In addition, attendees can "explore space" inside the Lunar Lander Simulator, step into the footprints of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin and hear related audio clips.
"There's interactive kiosks that show the actual launch that day and people's reactions to it," Bigeck said.
According to a news release from Joliet Junior College, Houbolt was born April 10, 1919 in Altoona, Iowa. In the 1930s, after his family moved to Joliet, Houbolt attended Joliet Central High School and Joliet Junior College.
The JJC 1938 yearbook, the year of Houbolt's graduation, said Houbolt studied civil engineering and participated in the college club.
After graduation, Houbolt attended the University of Illinois in Champaign, where he earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in civil engineering. He later earned his doctorate from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology at Zurich in 1957, the release also said.
In 1942, Houbolt began working for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), known at the time as National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) at the Langley Research Center in Hampton Virginia, one of the company’s first field centers, the release also said.
Houbolt wrote a nine-page letter to NASA Associate Administrator Robert Seamans, advocating using the lunar orbit rendezvous (LOR) method to travel to the moon, the release also said.
Art Maurer, the director of JJC's Herbert F. Trackman Planetarium, said NASA knew how to send astronauts to the moon. That wasn't the issue.
"When we sent astronauts, they wanted to come back," Maurer said. "That was a problem. NASA was trying all different ways."
In an email, Maurer explained how space flight works.
"We do not fly directly to any place in the solar system," Maurer wrote. "Earth’s escape velocity is 25,000 mph and we don’t have rockets capable of attaining that speed on leaving Earth.
"When leaving Earth, the rockets attain a speed of 17,500 mph. After reaching that speed, the rockets shut down and the spacecraft falls into a low Earth orbit (sometimes called a “parking orbit)."
"Once in the low Earth orbit, the spacecraft increases its orbit out to the moon. We use that method to send robots in space."
With the lunar rendezvous orbital system, "a major part of the spacecraft, (called the Columbia on Apollo 11) orbited the moon and a small vehicle (called the Eagle on Apollo 11) was used by the astronauts to descend to and ascend from the lunar surface," Maurer wrote.
"After the astronauts were back on Colombia, they went into a new orbit taking them home to Earth," Maurer said. "Time from takeoff to splashdown was 195 hours and 8 minutes.
Maurer points out to students that Houbolt attended the same schools they, too perhaps, attend, schools in their own communities.
"We've had 12 men who have walked no the moon," Maurer said. "We haven't had a woman walk on the moon because they chose fighter pilots and no girls were fighter pilots at the time A lot of girls are fighter pilots now. And they're good."
KNOW MORE
Maurer shared the following Apollo 11 trivia:
• The Apollo 11 computer had 2 MHz of processing power, 4 KB of RAM, and 72 KB of ROM, less than that of a modern calculator. Minutes before landing, the processor became overloaded due to extra tasks performed by the landing radar..
• For obvious reasons, the astronauts could not buy life insurance. So, for months prior to going to the moon, the astronauts signed thousands of postcards and left them with their wives. If they died during the mission, the wives could sell the autographs and make the value of a life insurance policy.
• The command module was only 12’ 10” wide and 10’ 7” high.
• The space suit and backpack the astronauts wore weighed 180 pounds on Earth, but only 30 pounds on the moon
• On the way to the moon, the Apollo 11 spacecraft did a “rotisserie roll," rotating three times per hour so that the sun’s heat wouldn’t expand one side of the vehicle.
• The astronauts ate individually packaged meals and consumed a total of 2600 calories per day.
• After landing on July 24, the astronauts were put into quarantine until Aug. 10.
IF YOU GO
WHAT: Journey Into History
WHEN: Noon to 4 p.m. July 19
WHERE: Joliet Area Historical Museum, 204 N. Ottawa St. Joliet
COST & INFO: Call 815-723-5201 or visit jolietmuseum.org.