This week, our final stop was at the International Space Museum, on Kitely. Rosa Alekseev, Shanna Starship, Kat Lemieux and Mike Lorrey were inworld to welcome us and give us the tour.
Mike Lorrey: how many are coming today?
Thirza Ember: well, we started out 24, but Outworldz had us crashing, so i don't know how many will survive
Lucy Afarensis: Thanks rough weather getting here
Mike Lorrey: Welcome to the International Spaceflight Museum, we are the same organization which operates in SL, we just have a little more room here, twice as much actually. ISM is a Texas 501c3. Our mission is to document and exhibit all the worlds endeavors with spaceflight.
Thirza Ember: what's your rl connection to space, guys?
Kat Lemieux: Thirza, I grew up with the space program since my dad was a chief engineer at the Cape in the 1960sMike Lorrey: You have arrived in the core of the Vehicle Assembly Building, which is a reproduction of a building of the same name at Cape Canaveral, Florida... we are working on faithfully reproducing as much of its interior and exterior as possible.
Kat Lemieux: Better known as the "VAB" since nobody knows if it should be "Vehicle" or "Vertical"
Kat Lemieux: OK, it's gone back and forth. I watched it being built when I was a kid.
Mike Lorrey: this is where NASA assembles its big rockets, from the Saturn rockets of the Apollo era, to the Space Shuttle, now on their Space Launch System and other large rockets... this area is what is known as the High Bay, which is where the vertical assembly happens, next door is a smaller, shorter area called the Low Bay, which is where smaller components are assembled and readied for moving in here to the vertical assembly process... the VAB is the largest enclosed volume in the world, or was at one time, not sure if its still the record holder.
Kat Lemieux: When we get the Saturn V here, you'll see 1st hand why it had to be so big. The Shuttle gets swallowed up in that volume.
Thirza Ember: very nice here, how did it all get started?
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| Mike and his remarkable hair |
Kat Lemieux: Mike has done most of it here. It was an impulse, actually. A couple of us built a "derelict" space station for Burning Life '05, and the idea just grew from there. I've been in Kitely for about 5 years now. Mike found us when he joined.
Mike Lorrey: This is the Voyager spacecraft, there were two of them, 1 and 2, which explored the outer solar system and are now heading into interstellar space... they visited Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune and transformed our understanding of our solar system.
George Equus: Hard to fathom, how far it has travelled so far...
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| Tha Cassini Probe |
Mike Lorrey: This is the Cassini Probe, which orbited Saturn for a number of years and has gone into depth exploring its moons like Titan and Enceladus...: We now suspect there may be life on one or both of those moons thanks to Cassini
Thirza Ember: there's definitely cheese so probably other life too
Mike Lorrey: Cassini flew through giant geysers of ice spewing from the south pole of Enceladus and detected precursor chemicals that indicate the conditions exist that favor life. Cassini is named after a rennaissance astronomer who studied Saturn.
Mike Lorrey: This is the Japanese experiment module that is part of the International Space Station or ISS, each box you see is a separate experiment exposed to the rigors of space, the arm is used to manage each one fro m within the module, and there are more experiments insideKat Lemieux: The first copy of JEM we got was built by someone who is retired from JAXA, the Japanese space agency ... In Kitely his avatar is named Hajime Nishimura
Ziggy Cagney: is that the arm made by canadians ?
Thirza Ember: what kinds of experiments
Mike Lorrey: all sorts from studying how life forms live in zero g, how they tolerate radiation and exposure as well as growing crystals and studying things like ignition and combustion
Thirza Ember: oh nice
George Equus: not for the life forms probably...
Thirza Ember: a bit like the safari then... being experimented on
Lucy Afarensis: There is a lot of mesh things on the NASA site
Kat Lemieux: We use some of NASA's mesh models, but mostly they have to be reworked for VWs since they are very full of extra vertices and use too much land impact. They aren't really designed for VWs.
Mike Lorrey: there is great potential for industry to grow all sorts of things in zero g from new proteins to better circuits, the economic potential of outer space is limitless, we just need to research the possibilities
Thirza Ember: this makes me think of Werner's region on Craft
Mike Lorrey: This is Deep Space 1, one of the first space probes to use a plasma propulsion system to get around, it has visited asteroids and comets.
Thirza Ember: what is plasma
Mike Lorrey: A plasma drive doesn't combust fuel like a chemical rocket engine, it excites it electronically to become very hot and ionically charged: plasma is the fourth state of matter, you have solid, liquid, gas and plasma, plasma is what happens to matter that is so hot that its electrons separate from the atoms
Lucy Afarensis: electrons are stripped from atoms
Mike Lorrey: because plasma is charged, you can guide and accelerate it with magnetic fields, radio waves, and electrostatic fields
Ziggy Cagney: the sun radiates plasma all the time
Mike Lorrey: so you use magnets to accelerate the plasma to very very high speed and get a lot more efficient push from the propellant than from a chemical reaction so the probe can go much faster and further for much less fuel ...best of all it can start and stop itself along its mission to visit deifferent locations.
Thirza Ember: wow that's very good explanation, thank you
Mike Lorrey: This is the Rosetta spacecraft which has been used to explore both the moon, and several comets, it is a european probe and landed a smaller probe from it upon one of its targets, its been very useful for understanding how comets function
Mike Lorrey: This area is where we're documenting a number of astronauts and their accomplishments, people who have achieved firsts in spaceflight
Thirza Ember: i like the way it's got all the nationalities in together
Mike Lorrey: yes we are working to document all space explorers regardless of national origin
George Equus: was checking for the Swede :)
Chip Angelvi: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_des_voyageurs_spatiaux la liste est impressionante
Rosa Alekseev: yes here we have the list of all that was first, if u search by country, u ll see the name of astronauts and in yellow u can see the photos too
Mal Burns: even the monkeys! yay
Kat Lemieux: And don't forget Laika, the Russian dog
Mike Lorrey: yes Laika and Ham were the first higher life forms to reach space
Rosa Alekseev: here we have the time of each one in space too in plan
Kat Lemieux: Eventually we will have a published database of all our exhibits, along with a metadata schema for describing 3D objects for virtual worlds
Mike Lorrey: We have an ultimate goal of packaging a complete museum into a "museum on a stick" that any school in the world could install on their school network to provide a safe learning environment for students to learn about space and spaceflight.
George Equus: This is a tantalizing way to do it!
Mike Lorrey: We feel that humanity is on the verge of reaching out to settle space and we want the world prepared for it.
Kat Lemieux: We will probably start out with subsets of the exhibits, and distribute them as OAR files on our website, http://ismuseum.org
George Equus: We ultimately have to...
Thirza Ember: i can think of a few people I'd like to volunteer for space exploration
Mal Burns: i can think of a few i would rather see off planet too Thirza
Mike Lorrey: ok let's go up above to see the rockets, behind Mal is the ESA Ariane V rocket, which is Europe's largest...up here you will find each rocket labeled on its object name with its RL title, we have rockets from Brazil, China, Japan, India, Israel, as well as the US Europe and Russia... this is Japan's H2 rocket, their largest which is used to launch satellites and has even resupplied the ISS
Rosa Alekseev: but we have Ariane 5 that was made with france and i m so proud cause took first satelite that ll connect all Brasil with internet
Kat Lemieux: The H2 launched Hayabusa, the Japanese comet probe back in (I think) 2006
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| Safari's own superstar, Wizard Gynoid |
Wizard Gynoid: I liked to go to the NASA museum in Second Life years ago.
Kat Lemieux: If you're talking about the ISM in Second Life, it was never NASA
Wizard Gynoid: the one with all the rockets.
Kat Lemieux: Yep, that was this museum. International Spaceflight Museum. NASA was next door until they quit. They didn't have a museum there.
Mike Lorrey: This is Man's first satellite, the Soviet Sputnik, simple enough, but historically titanic
George Equus: beep beep beep
Thirza Ember: the ruskies are coming
Mike Lorrey: lol ...This was America's first manned spacecraft, the Mercury capsule, 7 were flown by the astronauts who were said to have "the right stuff"
Kat Lemieux: THe Magnificent 7
Mal Burns: tight fit!
Rosa Alekseev: yes: indeed
Mike Lorrey: the first two were flown on top of the rocket next to me, the Mercury Redstone Rocket, it was the US Army's first ballistic missile and directly derived from the German V-2 rocket of WWII, in turn the V-2 was based on patents and rockets flown by American Dr Robert Goddard in the 1930's... Ham also flew on a Redstone
George Equus: Can't imagine being cooped up in that capsule...
Mike Lorrey: The atlas rocket, which I haven't got out yet, was the second rocket used by the mercury astronauts, and was used to put their capsules in orbit
Rosa Alekseev: neither i George
Mike Lorrey: across from us are the early soviet rockets, including their Vostok and Soyuz rockets
George Equus: This display is excellent. It's gigantic...
Kat Lemieux: Thanks, George! Largely Mike's work here in Kitely
Mike Lorrey: This is the Titan II rocket which launched the Gemini capsules, so called because they carried two astronauts
Thirza Ember: oh, that's why? I never knew that!
Mike Lorre;y: the Gemini was loved by the astronauts because of its long duration and maneuverability, it was the spacecraft from which our first spacewalks were taken
Wizard Gynoid: so any of these rockets fly? can we take a ride?
Mike Lorrey: no, not yet, we are focused on construction right now, scripting comes later.
George.Equus: I've seen regions similar in theme but never anything close to detailing and facts here
Kat Lemieux: We've had lots of time to develop, since 2005
Mike Lorrey: we are serious about functioning as a real museum to be a global resource.. and thank you all for coming. We are open 24/7, so feel free to come back to see how things develop.
George Equus: Thank you very much for the tour! Splendid... and a place to return to...
Shanna Starship: Take care!
Flidais Merlin: yes thanks - I'll definitely be back - bfn
Billy Bradshaw: Will do, thanks for the hospitality
George Equus: Thank you Rosa and Mike!
HG Address:
International Space Museum Rockets and satellites galoregrid.kitely.com:8002:ismuseum
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