Space Museum Research Articles

The indoor thermal environment performance of various air-conditioning system configurations and airflow modes in a large space museum building

Optimizing air distribution in site museums is crucial for the long-term protection of heritage sites and the thermal comfort of visitors and staff. This study examined a site museum, analyzing the traditional suspended ceiling air-conditioning system and proposing a more rational renovation. Using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) numerical simulations, the study evaluated the effects of both systems on site protection and thermal comfort. The results indicated that the retrofit scheme could significantly reduce the indoor air velocity and temperature with the same air supply parameters, which would improve human thermal comfort and also reduce the negative impact of temperature and wind speed on the site. Additionally, the retrofit scheme cut air-conditioning energy consumption by 40% and reduced initial investment costs for a unit with a rated airflow of 62,000 m³/h. The optimization of the air-conditioning system ends was also carefully considered, resulting in a safer and easier installation and maintenance process, as well as enhancing the visual appeal of the museum’s interior. The proposed retrofit scheme can provide a reference for the design of air-conditioning systems in similar types of buildings.

The Multiple Speeds of Infrastructural Violence, or Putting Flesh on the Boneyard

In recent years, museums have been acknowledged as powerful geopolitical sites. In this article, we explore the military museums of southern Arizona, primarily the Pima Air and Space Museum in Tucson, as a unique kind of infrastructure where the museum and the military meet. Drawing on participant observation, we explore how the museum experience provides crucial affective and emotional dimensions to the ideological production the military is involved in. This article also uses geographic information systems to begin charting connections between these museums and their immediate surroundings in the city and region, as well as the wider territories that the military museums help to maintain. As military infrastructure morphs into museum experiences, we consider the epistemic violence that results and consider how it might also be a form of slow infrastructural violence, insofar as it helps maintain unequal relations of power and ongoing violence around the world and in the city itself.

Historical Controversies and Collective Memory: Reassessing the Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

This article explores the complex historical and public memory controversies surrounding the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, focusing on the National Air and Space Museum’s Enola Gay exhibition. It examines how different historians interpret the use of atomic bombs and the varying narratives presented to the public. Through the lens of Michel Foucault’s theory on popular memory, the study highlights the tensions between official narratives and revisionist perspectives. The analysis reveals how national patriotism and historical revisionism shape collective memory, questioning the ownership of historical truth. The Enola Gay controversy exemplifies the ongoing debate over historical representation, public history, and the ethical implications of wartime actions. By revisiting this controversy, the paper aims to provide a nuanced understanding of how history is constructed and contested, emphasizing the importance of inclusive and critical engagement with historical events.

Augmented Reality for Civic Education within Makerspace Museums

This study explores the integration of Augmented Reality in civic education within Maker Space Museums. We devised a methodology using feedback from students at the University of la Costa, Villavicencio, Colombia, and applied legal design techniques for data analysis. The proposed Augmented Reality application aims to enhance civic competency by fostering multiperspectivism. It provides an interactive, digitally enriched learning environment, helping students explore diverse perspectives on complex issues. Our approach includes a prototype tailored to students’ needs, offering an innovative educational tool that bridges gaps between conflicting viewpoints and potential solutions, promoting informed, comprehensive civic understanding.

Unveiling the Critical Factors of Terrestrial Space Tourism Destinations

ABSTRACT Spanning from orbital and suborbital flights to spaceports, space museums, space hotels, and much more, space tourism is poised to redefine the landscape of the travel industry, promising economic growth, and prosperity for destinations across the globe. However, despite its transformative potential, existing literature has dedicated little attention to its exploration. Our research endeavours to shed light on the concept of terrestrial space tourism destinations. We crafted a comprehensive theoretical model that forms the bedrock for a deeper understanding of this unique and specialized niche. We employ a qualitative approach, drawing from an array of sources, including interviews with industry experts and key informants. Findings uncovered several critical factors that need to be considered when establishing a competitive and sustainable terrestrial space tourism destination, namely: safety, residents’ acceptance, infrastructures, and education. Furthermore, we introduce six research gaps that can inspire future investigations in this dynamically evolving field.

Making Space for Women: Stories from Trailblazing Women of NASA’s Johnson Space Center ed. by Jennifer M. Ross-Nazzal

Reviewed by: Making Space for Women: Stories from Trailblazing Women of NASA’s Johnson Space Center ed. by Jennifer M. Ross-Nazzal Margaret A. Weitekamp Making Space for Women: Stories from Trailblazing Women of NASA’s Johnson Space Center. Edited by Jennifer M. Ross-Nazzal. (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2022. Pp. 443. Illustrations, notes index.) With this excellent compilation of oral history interviews, editor Jennifer Ross-Nazzal, the historian at the Johnson Space Center (JSC), the center for human spaceflight and mission control for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), introduces readers to twenty-one women whose hard work and dedication helped build that center’s reputation for excellence. As a scholar, I have frequently searched for oral [End Page 393] history interviews in the deep collection that the JSC’s history office created and maintains. The individual experiences and personal recollections of contemporary actors—and the more than 1,400 oral history interviews compiled by the Johnson Space Center as of the book’s printing—deepen understanding of historical events and enliven their retelling. With this collection, Ross-Nazzal brings a selection of those resources to a broader readership. Ross-Nazzal’s introduction provides a well-researched and carefully footnoted summary of the history of women’s participation as NASA professionals. That progress was uneven, as such changes tend to be. She traces the broad outlines of the history beginning from the 1960s, when a woman behind a desk was assumed to be a secretary even if she was not, to the current day, which includes women in JSC’s leadership positions and an onsite childcare center. Ross-Nazzal self-consciously frames this volume as another possible aid to encourage that cultural shift toward women’s fuller participation in the professional work of spaceflight. Ross-Nazzal opens the volume with two oral history interviews from secretaries and administrative support, a fitting choice because for many years women’s participation at JSC was restricted to such roles. Nonetheless, reading these interviews reminds readers how vital such positions were for NASA’s work. The oral histories in this collection feature mathematicians and engineers, then flight controllers, spacesuit technicians, nurses and scientists, astronauts, trainers, senior management, and center management. Given how much the work at JSC focuses on human spaceflight, Ross-Nazzal makes a deliberate choice to illustrate through the book’s structure how much the work of astronauts is embedded in a network of other equally vital positions. The interview subjects go as far back in JSC’s history as Dee O’Hara, the nurse who worked closely with the original seven Project Mercury astronauts. She started at NASA in 1959, before the agency moved its human (then called “manned”) spaceflight operations to Houston. Peggy Whitson brings the story almost to the present as an astronaut who commanded the International Space Station and served as Chief of the Astronaut Office before retiring in 2018 to work for Axiom, a commercial spaceflight company. Throughout, the themes of mentorship and commitment to the mission illustrate how women gained professional footholds in fields that were not always completely welcoming. Often professional advancement decisions occurred because the right job, at the right level, opened at the right time. Readers should note that the chapters are edited versions of oral history interviews, not third-person accounts. As a result, in some instances there are references to federal government employment (such as pay-grade levels and NASA acronyms) that may not be immediately clear. Making Space for Women would be an excellent addition to history, women’s studies, or STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) [End Page 394] classes to show students the range of careers that might be open to them thanks to these path-breaking women. Margaret A. Weitekamp Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum Copyright © 2022 The Texas State Historical Association

The photometric observation of the quasi-simultaneous mutual eclipse and occultation between Europa and Ganymede on 22 August 2021

Mutual events (MEs) are eclipses and occultations among planetary natural satellites. Most of the time, eclipses and occultations occur separately. However, the same satellite pair will exhibit an eclipse and an occultation quasi-simultaneously under particular orbital configurations. This kind of rare event is termed as a quasi-simultaneous mutual event (“QSME”). During the 2021 campaign of mutual events of jovian satellites, we observed a QSME between Europa and Ganymede. The present study aims to describe and study the event in detail. We observed the QSME with a CCD camera attached to a 300-mm telescope at the Hong Kong Space Museum Sai Kung iObservatory. We obtained the combined flux of Europa and Ganymede from aperture photometry. A geometric model was developed to explain the light curve observed. Our results are compared with theoretical predictions (“O-C”). We found that our simple geometric model can explain the QSME fairly accurately, and the QSME light curve is a superposition of the light curves of an eclipse and an occultation. Notably, the observed flux drops are within 2.6% of the theoretical predictions. The size of the event central time O-C’s ranges from −14.4 to 43.2 s. Both O-C’s of flux drop and timing are comparable to other studies adopting more complicated models. Given the event rarity, model simplicity and accuracy, we encourage more observations and analysis on QSMEs to improve Solar System ephemerides.

Applying Commemorative Museum Pedagogy to Public Music Studies

Applying Commemorative Museum Pedagogy to Public Music Studies

The Smithsonian’s soft power: how foreigners engage the US national museum

ABSTRACT Foreigners’ engagement with the Smithsonian provides clues to understanding what is attractive about America. There are two main draws -American science and technology and America’s immigrant community. For foreign visitors the National Air and Space Museum is the most popular. Foreign experts are especially drawn to the Institution’s science research and the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. The Soft Power Rubric uses the volume and direction of observable social interactions to measure the social connection between countries. Whether foreigners feel endearment for another country and wish to emulate it is an essential distinction between soft power and hard power.

Touch Points: Co-Designing Tactile Exhibition Elements with User/Experts

ABSTRACT The development of accessible elements in museum exhibitions is an important pursuit that needs a well-defined process. Educators at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, working with accessibility professionals and blind or low-vision user/experts, discovered the value of co-designing tactile models with the people who would eventually use them. The team conducted a series of interviews intended to tweak proposed designs for the tactile. However, based on the first user/expert’s valuable feedback, the process shifted into collaboratively revamping the overall design concepts. The results were two new tactile models that better fulfilled their intended purpose: empowerment of the blind and low-vision user/experts, and new insights for the exhibition educators. From this case study, the authors present recommendations for how museum educators might implement co-design with user/experts.

Through the Thorns to Where? The Politics of Alternative Appropriations of Soviet Space Culture in Contemporary Russia

This article investigates the political implications of contemporary Russian cultural artifacts that appropriate Soviet space culture. Scholarship on Soviet and post-Soviet space history, increasingly interested in cultural production, highlights the transformation of Soviet space into usable history for the Russian regime. Nostalgia for Soviet space facilitates nation-building, allows political and economic capitalization on behalf of many state-affiliated actors, and lubricates the commodification of Soviet space heroism. In this article, such appropriations are discussed in terms of a neo-heroic Soviet space narrative characteristic of Russian space culture. This narrative, which principally performs a function of legitimation, has significantly progressed in recent years. This becomes clear from the recent release of Russian historical space blockbusters. However, other attempts to use Soviet space are also present. This article suggests two other narratives that attempt to appropriate Soviet space culture: the globalized Soviet science fiction (SF) narrative, and the “futuristic realist” narrative of constructing a new USSR. In both cases, there seems to be an attempt to change a nostalgic orientation of post-Soviet space culture, offering futuristic visions instead. While such attempts are not unproblematic, this article argues that they also deserve attention, especially if we want to better understand Russia's present stance and future alternatives in the new space race. Places such as Russian space museums are especially interesting in how they appropriate Soviet space culture and history, given that they seem to integrate narratives and maneuver between them. Performing both legitimizing and futuristic functions, Russian space museums are places where a new master narrative of Russian space, connected to the Soviet one, might appear.

The Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum and “The Romance of Technological Progress”

The Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum (NASM) remains one of the world’s most visited museums precisely because it embodies the “romance of technological progress.” From its origins in the US National Museum of the early twentieth century to the opening of its first dedicated building in 1976 and beyond, visitors have flocked to the NASM to see exhibits on the wonders of aerospace technology. An attempt to depart from that narrative in the 1990s by telling the story of the atomic bombings of Japan was crushed by an organized campaign. In the aftermath, the museum reverted to its old pattern, albeit broadened to include greater diversity in the historical actors it featured. Today, as NASM rebuilds its original building, it is again striving, albeit more cautiously, to stretch the limits of its traditional mission.

Museums: Preserving Heritage, Comprehending Past, Forming Identity

Perception of museums as space of co-operation between public and collections is rethought constantly, with primarily taking into account a sociocultural situation. It is reflected on the specifics of the direction of activity and determination of the mission of different museums. Nowadays, scientists interpret the museum space as social space and regard museums as institutes of social memory (historical memory or cultural memory). Communication, interactivity, and participation are considered to be the main components determining the development of the modern museum. The aim of this study is to analyse the strategy of determination of priority directions of the museum activity and the place and role of museums in the processes of memory. Museums accumulate and translate the experience of a certain culture and the way they present this experience; it is a part of the complicated process of formation of the nation identity. Museum professionals often say that an important task now is to choose one and only line among the events and to create a common collective experience that in turn influences the self-identity of an individual. First, every museum must choose the educational strategy and define the priority directions of their activity. The sharpest discussions in Ukraine concern the direction of the national museums. If a museum considers the priority direction of the activity organization of leisure, then the question is whether it can have the status of national. The function of leisure is important but cannot be basic; in fact, the essence of the museum is the function of cognition. A special attention should be paid to the fact that a tendency of “walls without the museum,” that is the museum without traditional collections, now undergoes substantial changes. Such museums afterwards begin to complete their own collection. It is presently impossible to ignore such an important theme as the maintenance of the cultural heritage and digital transformation. Museums actively use multimedia technologies for the maintenance and popularization of the heritage. But a specific feature of the museum as an institution of storage, study, andtranslation of subject forms of culture has not been lost. Museum objects themselves are the basis of adaptive and inculturation possibilities of the museum. In the epoch of globalization, a museum can create optimal terms for the cultural identification. Presently our task is not consideration of certain historic events and their influence on forming the historic memory of the Ukrainian people. It is important to mark that potential of museums as grounds of proceeding in the national memory and Ukrainian identity considerable enough, but not exposed, and not only by regional museums. The study and use of experience of the creation of complex narratives on difficult questions of history in the museums of the world are important enough for Ukrainian museum professionals. Modern museums, while developing projects related to traumatic remembrances, questions of firmness, dialogue, problems of reconciliation in conflict periods of history, run into numerous problems but must not forget that these projects will assist a reflection among the public.

“My Compliments to your Dressmaker”: The Past and Future of Wearable Tech

389 NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE “My Compliments to your Dressmaker”: The Past and Future of Wearable Tech “Do you think you can gather more information with your eyes than I can with my sensors?” —Dr. Miranda Jones, “Is There in Truth No Beauty?” Star Trek 60 Although Diana Muldaur gives a commanding performance as Dr. Miranda Jones, the telepathic ambassador to the dread Medusan emissary in the fifth episode of the third season of the original Star Trek, she is not the star of the show. The real luminary of the 60th episode is not human at all, nor Romulan or Vulcan, for that matter. It is the dress that Dr. Jones wears for the duration: a shimmering, lightly woven, jewel-studded confection (see fig. 1 and 2, below). Not even the terrible lighting of the starship Enterprise can dull its effervescence, and not even Captain Kirk’s unwanted amorous advances can diminish its decidedly feminine power. The dress has presence, has agency (more on which in a moment), so it is no surprise that since its debut in the popular imagination in 1968, the garment has also starred in a variety of museum exhibitions devoted to Star Trek fandom, costuming history, and textile appreciation, in venues as storied as the Smithsonian Institute’s National Air and Space Museum (Mills). Indeed, Dr. Miranda Jones’s bedazzling dress exemplifies how science fiction both integrates and expands upon the fashion of its time. In the context of the episode’s original release (October 1968), it is interesting to compare the cover model of the 1 November 1968 issue of Vogue, Françoise Rubartelli, who is bedecked in jewels from the bustline up (fig. 3, below). The description of her Pierre Cardin ensemble could be used to describe Miranda Jones’s gown: “embroidered in a rainbow of dazzle from neck to waist—jewel-bright pailletes, silvery sequins, and bits of mirror ... brilliance carried up to the chin” (“Embroidered” 3). So also could the description of serpentine jewels that snake up the forearm of Veruschka on the cover of the 15 November issue (fig. 4, below): “dazzled here by the accessory of the hour” (“Dazzled” 3) or the silver-toned costume that Lauren Hutton wears on the cover of the December issue that same year (fig. 5, 390 SCIENCE FICTION STUDIES, VOLUME 48 (2021) below): “a feast of dazzle for the Christmas eye” (“Feast” 3). Correlation is not causation, of course; and it is in any case less important to identify which of these costumes precedes the others than to observe that all seem to reach out, like the sensitive, tentacled, and bedazzled feelers of an alien being, to an as-yet undefined future. We see the same anticipatory impulse in a variety of popular fashion lines today: the music videos that accompany Lady Gaga’s Chromatica (2020), for example, are as lushly colored and enticing as any M-class planet Captain Kirk and crew might have measured with their tricorders and also depict enough exquisitely tailored, form-fitting costumes to make Barbarella blush—or, given Barbarella’s breath-heavy victory over the sexual excesses of the “Excessive Machine,” perhaps Duran Duran would be the one blushing. (Fun fact: “Barbarella” is the name of a shade of lipstick by Nars Cosmetics.) Speaking of that Jane Fonda film released in October 1968, a recent story in Town and Country—“How 1970s Comic Books and Barbarella Inspired Van Cleef & Arpels’ New High Jewelry Collection”—features a diamond- and sapphire-studded lapis lazuli necklace in the shape of a diadem that one can easily imagine encircling Barbarella’s neck (Volandes). A recent line of jewelry from Chanel—“Constellation Astrale”—similarly riffs upon the celestial imagery so common in science fiction: with its sparkling gold stars, the necklace might adorn the décolletage of Wonder Woman herself. All these sumptuous objects share the sparkle of that Star Trek dress. What remains fascinating about Miranda Jones’s, however, is not the graceful symmetry of its weblike structure or the lavish appearance of its many sparkling nodes. This futuristic frock continues to delight because it is not, in the end, merely beautiful or decorative. No fashionable object is...

Drone cultures: encounters with everyday militarisms

ABSTRACT Militarized perception is always leaking into public culture, from the aerial prospect of balloon flight to the soldier’s helmet camera. Increasingly, the mode of militarized perception most powerfully emergent in Anglo-American everyday life is that of the militarized drone: flattened, loitering, zooming, networked. This mode of perception is enacted by a logistic assemblage that is military in origin, one in which remote sensors, signal flows and autonomous processes work across complex human-machine networks. The paper tracks this new form of everyday militarism across four scenes of cultural life: the Predator on display in the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum; the DJI Spark consumer selfie drone; recreational use of drones in Sydney, Australia; and the activist deployment of drones as witnesses in Hagit Keysar’s artwork ‘No Fly Zone: Jerusalem.’ In doing so, the paper traces the forms and dynamics of drone perception to argue that an emergent ‘drone culture’ can be seen in the manifestation in everyday life of modes of perception distinct to the remote sensing apparatus of the militarized drone.

Constructing the Electric Eye: Situating the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum’s Wisconsin Collection of Photoelectric Detectors in Historical Context

Between 2017 and 2019, the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum acquired a collection of photoelectric tubes used in the earliest program of astronomical photoelectric photometry at the University of Wisconsin. The Wisconsin Collection of Photoelectric Detectors represents a unique look inside the development of a pioneering research project and a fledgling technology. The process by which techniques and technologies related to photoelectric photometry developed in the early twentieth century involved a variety of academic disciplines and commercial actors, and this process is reflected in the variety and specific features of the tubes in the collection. This paper attempts to situate the Wisconsin Collection within the wider development of photoelectric tubes as a technology, the development of observation techniques at Wisconsin, and their contributions to astronomical knowledge.

Curating the space race, celebrating cooperation: Exhibiting space technology during 1970s détente

During the 1960s, US and Soviet space efforts engaged in a surrogate space race at international expositions, displaying real and replica space hardware as a way of demonstrating their celestial achievements to an earthbound public. The following decade saw an uneasy détente between the Cold War superpowers that prompted a new rhetorical emphasis on space cooperation rather than competition that spilled over into transnational collaborations and exchanges between the curators of American and Soviet space exhibitions. Drawing on documents from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and Smithsonian Institution archives in Washington, DC, this article reveals how competitive displays of space technology were reconfigured to sell US–Soviet space cooperation. Official government-sponsored cooperative exhibits were spectacular and bombastic, but détente also fostered a quieter, transnational process of exchange between Soviet and American curators. American curators at the Smithsonian’s newly opened National Air and Space Museum were eager to build ties with their Soviet counterparts. However, the collaborations that resulted from these ties often ended up reinforcing their museum’s nationalistic narrative rather than subverting it. The 1970s saw the emergence of a transnational community of professional space curators dedicated to memorializing the early space age, but 1970s space exhibitions continued to reflect the previous decade’s nationalistic competition.

Have the Voices of Nagasaki Been Heeded?

In the face of vitriolic attacks, the United States National Air and Space Museum (NASM) was forced in 1994 to drop a plan for a meticulous exhibit to provide American citizens with a once-in-a-lif...

Apollo 50: How one museum celebrated the first Moon landing

The 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing in July 2019 was an opportunity for the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum to position itself not just as an inspiring and exciting institution but also a leading resource for aerospace knowledge. This article describes the museum’s Apollo 50 social media campaign, which saw engagement and follower numbers grow at a rate more ten times the museum’s average. It explores the strategies driving the campaign, how the museum wrangled a vast amount of content, activities and information into a strategic and cohesive campaign, and the role of social media in sharing the museum’s site-specific Apollo 50 activities with a global audience.

Tourism demonstration system for large-scale museums based on 3D virtual simulation technology

Purpose The purpose of this study is to enhance audience experience in museum by using three-dimensional (3D) virtual simulation technology. Design/methodology/approach In this study, a large space museum building tourism demonstration system based on 3D virtual simulation technology was proposed. Starting from the concept of virtual reality (VR), the characteristics of VR and the classification of VR systems were introduced, and the research status of VR technology at home and abroad and the application of 3D virtual simulation were discussed. Then the key technologies of 3D modeling, 3D scene optimization and 3D simulation driving of 3D virtual simulation were expounded, and the characteristics and application scope of different technical methods were analyzed. Finally, an example of the Hongzhou Kiln 3D network museum was listed. Findings The research results showed that 3D virtual simulation has a wide range of applications in the field of VR. Different elements need to be considered for different types of applications, and different contents need to be integrated to achieve the corresponding interaction modes. Originality/value Virtual image; multimedia; large space museum; tourism demonstration system; 3D virtual simulation technology.