Chapel hill. Im standing in front of the morehead building. Home of the morehead planetarium, which is now the morehead planetarium and science center. John motley morehead iii, from a famous North Carolina family, the moreheads, his grandfather was governor of North Carolina. John motley morehead iii, attended carolina as undergraduate student in chemist chemistry. Made an accidental discovery in a Chemistry Lab that led to the founding of Union Carbide and from that, he became an extremely wealthy man. And in the 30s when he conceived of this idea, what you did as a leading edge Science Education contribution would be building a planetarium. When we opened in 1949, the morehead planetarium was the first in the south. So his contribution was significant. We were also the first planetarium anywhere in the world on a university campus. So he visited the planetarium in chicago. The hayden planetarium. He also visited zeis, the leading lens manufacturer in the world. They arguably still are. In germany. He had a zeis model two projector installed which was the best in the world. His original vision was to be a place of education and enlightenment. Now here is a photograph released by the satellite and this is a track of what you will see in the lower half of your television screen. So be sure that you watch very, very carefully. There it is. I see it. Out in the center of the screen in the lower third. In the late 1950s, the United States government in response to sputnik being launched and the advancement of the soviet union and their technology, especially with rocketry and space exploration, u. S. Government was felt threatened and felt like there needed to be a response, and so, nasa was formed in the late 50s and shortly there after, the announcement was made that we were going to eventually going to send humans into space. Our director at the time and the head of nasa at the time, communicated about possibility of celestial navigation and the idea being that as the ancient mariners did, sailing the sea using the stars as a way to navigate, these new pioneers could be able to use the stars just in case their Navigation Systems would fail. And so, from 1959 to 1975, morehead planetarium trained all the astronauts in celestial navigation. I like to say that unc chapel hill was the only university in the country that can claim 62 astronauts as alumni because they came here for continuing education courses for celestial navigation. The morehead team always used pretty primitive technology themselves. Throughout the training. We had the project or, zeis modl six, which was a better projector, the flosty stayed the same. The Main Technology that they use as a barbers chair and different wooden or card board hood attachments that they would attach to the barbers chair to simulate whatever the capsule is. The idea was that whatever you could do to reorient the astronauts. So, barbers chair seemed to work really well. Could spin. It could rotate. It could pitch and all those things had b to be simulated because thoed would be whse wou astronauts would experience while in space. Those 62 astronauts that came here for celestial Navigation Training needed to know the night sky better than anyone. They learned specific constellations. Specific stars that they could relate to. They could figure out where they were in space in relation to where those consolations were. Now, you have to remember that they had no horizon when they were in space to reference. Their vision was restricted through the size of the windows. They may have only seen maybe one eight of the entire night sky that e we would see without any horizon, so they had no basis point. These astronauts knew where they were in space because they knew where the important stars were. These were used in all the early missions. Because the Navigation Systems were so primitive. The First Mission where it was critical that the night sky used to get the astronaut back home safely was the mercury atlas of gordon cooper. In that case, he faced all kinds of equipment failures including the Navigation Systems. He used the, his knowledge gain from morehead and the training he received here, to relocate and actually manually reenter earths atmosphere. Interestingly enough, that was the only one of that mission, of that series, that was landed manually. Also the most accurate splashdown in that series of missions. So it ended. 24 hours, 30 minutes, 21 seconds. The apollo 12 mission was also impacted. Struck by lightning on takeoff. What was that . They were able to use their knowledge of the stars to recalibration their Navigation System that was thrown out because of the storm and they were able to reset pretty early and able to complete their mission. Apollo 13 is probably the most Famous Mission that did not land on the moon. There was an explosion and a fire. We have a problem here. Go, guys. Weve had a hardware restart. I dont know what it was. Okay. It was actually a debris field and so, jim lovell and his crew, could not see where they were throughout the mission because of the debris cloud that surrounded the spacecraft. When they aborted the mission, they orbited the moon right before they reentered earths atmosphere, the debris field clear and they were able to look out their windows to confirm that they had adjusted their Navigation Systems correctly. So again, they used their knowledge gain ed from morehead training to e ensure that they were on the right path and they made it home safely. We show you. It really look ed great. At morehead, we like to say we train astronauts and we are training future astronauts so we want every visitor here to see that the sky truly is not, the skys not even the limit. That there is a entire, huge universe out there. The pioneer of tomorrow are looking at the challenges of deep space and also here on earth sochlt the things were learning here today, we have no idea how it will advance us, and so what we want is for the people, especially the children that walk through the doors of morehead, to know that whatever contribution they can make is an important one and we have no idea where it will take us or how it will impact us. American history tv on cspan3, exploring the people and events that tell the american story every weekend and coming up this weekend, saturday at 1 00 p. M. Eastern, will mark the 57th anniversary of the march on washington with the nbc news broadcast, the American Revolution of 63, which aired less than one week after the august 28th, 1963 march, and dr. Martin luther king jr. s i have a dream speech. On sunday at 2 30 p. M. , john wilkeman discusses his book which explores the history of nonfiction films and television from late 19th century Thomas Edison films to 21st century reality tv. At 4 00 p. M. On real america, well feature two programs from a cspan archives on civil rights leaders, starting with writer James Baldwin at the National Press club on israracism in ame. Also at 6 00 p. M. On american artifacts, a look at women in congress with matthew wasski and farrah elliot with artifacts from Jeanette Rankin in 1917. Watch this weekend on cspan3. Up next on history book shelf, january van mejan van me explores the context of several catch phrases in his book. We recorded this talk at book culture bookstore in new york city in 2008
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