Megs H. Profile picture
Jun 22, 2021 10 tweets 5 min read Read on X
L-28 days @BlueOrigin #NewShepard #FHF 🚀👩‍🚀

Figured it might be fun to share some fun facts along the way…

#DYK Alan Shepard carried a $1 bill on his Mercury flight? Do you know WHY? (It’s way more interesting…)
Just 3 weeks prior to Alan Shepard’s historic flight for the US, Yuri Gagarin had made history as the first human in space…

But at that time…

Official recognition for the Soviet Union was still being WITHHELD by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI) 🙅‍♂️
The Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI) @airsports_fai is the world's air sports federation. It was founded in 1905 to further aeronautical and astronautical activities worldwide.

Among its duties, the FAI certifies and registers records…including record disputes ;)
According to the FAI’s “code of conduct,” an official would need to witness+verify that the person who stepped IN to the capsule was the same person who stepped OUT of it 100+ miles downrange.

The problem? Not enough time for an official to get from launch site to landing site.
NAA/NASA officials came up with a simple solution:

Shepard would carry a $1 bill given to him by an official. After recovery, he would share the bill. The S/N would be transmitted via radio & compared with the pre-recorded S/N.

A match would be accepted as formal verification✅
The FAI agreed, and this became standard practice on the first U.S. spaceflights.

That same procedure was followed on every early U.S. space mission from Mercury, to Gemini, to Apollo 🚀
That dollar bill fulfilled the ID requirement of the FAI Sporting Code, even though modern telemetering equipment and worldwide television effectively removed any doubt as to the astronaut identity ;)

The FAI has now certified 217 individual space flight records since 1961…
PS, the Gagarin’s historic flight was later officially recognized by the FAI

…after Shepard’s first flight ;)
For ref, this thread is a summary of takeaways from the @airspacemag article below. Give it a read for more snippets and the full story ✌️

airspacemag.com/daily-planet/w…
-the

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More from @megsylhydrazine

Aug 14, 2021
#TIL that engineers had issues with the honeycomb insulation on the #SaturnV second stage, so they ended up hiring local surfers from #SealBeach CA, who had experience in working with the material, to apply it to the vehicle 🚀🏄 @NASAhistory
The challenging area was the Stage Two (S-II) common bulkhead on #SaturnV, where the LH2 and LO2 tanks shared a common interface (see center of image)
In #SaturnV's early days, #NorthAmericanAviation engineers attempted to adhere the insulation to the LH2 tanks in large vacuum chambers, so the insulation would be sucked down onto the adhesive coated metal. However, the team had problems with the insulation popping off the tank.
Read 13 tweets
Apr 18, 2020
This is what happens to aluminum when hit by a 1/2 oz (~14g) piece of plastic going 15,000 mph (~24000 km/h) in space 💥

#Hypervelocity
👆 shows the violence a little piece of orbiting space debris can wreak on a spacecraft 🛰

#Hypervelocity
That’s the great thing about Kinetic Energy (KE):

KE = ½mv^2

Velocity is *far* more important than mass. Doesn’t matter how light something is...if it’s moving really fast, it can pack a serious punch!

#Hypervelocity
Read 16 tweets
Sep 14, 2019
Growing up, I heard there was a secret "NASA" rocket testing facility in northern Nevada (home for me), but I never knew what it was. Today, I finally found out...
Thanks to @Erdayastronaut, while digging into aerospike engine history, he came across this test site in Nevada called the "Nevada Field Laboratory" (NFL) which is tucked away between Reno, NV and Pyramid Lake 📍 Map: maps.apple.com/?address=Reno,…
The NFL test site is only 20 miles north of Reno, and the only people that (I recall) knowing that this place even existed were local farmers.

Turns out...this place was instrumental in the #Gemini, #Apollo, and #Shuttle programs for supporting rocket engine dev testing 🚀
Read 24 tweets
Jun 12, 2019
Reading some @NASAhistory, and was curious who this was...
Her name is Poppy Northcutt, and she's the first female engineer to work in Mission Control at @NASA_Johnson #Apollo8.
For half a century, pop culture has immortalized a group of quick-thinking, pocket-protected men as the face of NASA’s mission control room during the Apollo program. But amid this sea of men, was one woman: Frances “Poppy” Northcutt, engineer and return-to-Earth specialist #NASA
Read 43 tweets
May 29, 2019
Finally got to watch @apollo11movie and was curious who this was...
Her name is JoAnn Morgan, and she was the only woman inside the control room at the historic launch of #Apollo11 in 1969. A glimpse of her is seen in this documentary, but that’s only the beginning of her story.
At the time, JoAnn was a 28-year-old instrumentation controller and the first woman permitted to be inside the firing room (where all personnel were locked in 30 minutes before blastoff) during an Apollo launch. #Apollo11
Read 44 tweets

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