Sneak Peek: Living Computers: Museum + Labs

There is an amazing new experience to be had in Seattle's Sodo neighborhood. The former Living Computer Museum is now Living Computers: Museum + Labs, and the transformation is absolutely captivating.

It didn't take CJ and Annabelle long to feel at home!


"We wanted to create a space people want to hang out in," museum executive director Lath Carlson explained during our sneak preview.


Mission accomplished, Living Computers: Museum + Labs!

The kids spent a few minutes reading cards in what felt like a futuristic living room. The one above was a favorite. We love geek humor. 

The rebooted first floor has state-of-the-art learning labs which will serve as a resource for area schools, many of which have the desire and drive, but lack the resources and technology to introduce computer science to their students. 

Regarding the reinvented first floor, "We're most excited about our lab spaces," executive director Carlson told us. In the labs, visitors can learn soldering, coding, robotics and more. In the labs, "We'll offer in-depth experiences," he informed.

The expandable, adaptable lab space is perfect for field trips, workshops and special programs, noted Nina Arens, the museum's education coordinator. There's an affordable, flat-fee model for student groups, which includes museum and lab access and lots of opportunity "for exploring hands on," she said. 
More info about field trips here: http://www.livingcomputers.org/Events/Field-Trips.aspx

The lab is outfitted with state-of-the art laptops with touch screens, and programming possibilities include Scratch, Unity and more, noted Arens.

The lab spaces are filled with colorful kits, tools and tech just crying to be tinkered with. The lab is outfitted with state-of-the art laptops with touch screens, and programming possibilities include Scratch, Unity and more, noted Arens.

A big magnet on the fabulous new first floor is an interactive display just begging to be touched. It's all about shark populations, activity and habitat.

The smart table features data and footage gleaned from a Baited Remote Underwater Video (BRUV) rig. It's a marine-grade staineless steel frame with a GoPro camera, made to capture footage of sharks around the globe. 

Visitors can use sensors and their hands to launch cool videos about sharks.

We could have spent an hour at this table, alone. 

Behind the doors of the Digital Studio, an immersive world awaits.

An entire wall of one room features vibrant screens and a dynamic artwork called Flowers and People - Dark by teamLab

"It's mesmerizing, and always being created, right now, in the moment," observed museum curator Aaron Alcorn, PhD.

The digital work, with sound by Hideaki Takahashi, is neither prerecorded animation nor on a loop. Rather, it's artwork rendered in real time by a computer program. Interaction between viewers and the art installation creates continuous change.

According to teamLab, "States can never be replicated, and will never reoccur."
https://www.team-lab.net/w/flowerandpeople-dark/

In the same space, adjacent to the art wall, is a circular table with a captivating display of cows, stars, rain and more that responded to touch. Human interaction is sensed by a Microsoft Kinect device mounted on the ceiling. 

We had to tear the kids away.

In a room next to the interactive art, we found an oh-so-fun and familiar Makey Makey. In this instance, it was used to create a paper piano. 

Not to be missed in the renovated museum are the lofty spaces in between the old and new museum exhibits.

The loft's Internet of Things space is devoted to exploring the internetworking of devices, structures and other items embedded with software, sensors, electronics, actuators, and and/or network connectivity that enable the devices or objects to collect and exchange data via the Internet. 

It's all about connectivity!

An attractive corner of the main floor is all about virtual reality.

Sure, it offers a state-of-the-art, immersive VR experience in the here and now ... 

but the space also points out that this 'cutting edge' technology has been around for decades, and has taken many forms. 

This display is one of the many instances tying the 'old' LCM to the new incarnation.
"We're not losing sight of where we came from as an institution," curator Aaron Alcorn assured.

Though we'd all like to forget the VirtualBoy, ha ha. 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_Boy

The first floor has a sizable space dedicated to robots. Pictured here, Baxter is an automated co-worker designed to redifine how robots are used in the workplace. http://www.rethinkrobotics.com/baxter/

There's also a fun place to play with Dash robots. Rolypoly, these smart robots teach users coding through play.

As they sing and 'dance' about, the adorable little Dash robots seem to have personality plus. https://www.makewonder.com/

Yet another display lets visitors build their own cubelet robots. http://www.modrobotics.com/cubelets/

A display on the main floor allows users to operate a Telelpresence Robot that's rolling around upstairs. These 'stand in' robots serve as a presence for telecommuters, long distance students, and more. http://www.doublerobotics.com/

The new space thoughtfully includes plenty of ties to the 'old' space upstairs.

"The first floor wouldn't exist without it," curator Aaron Alcorn pointed out. 


A sweet example of that tie is a good ol' Apple IIe running The Oregon Trail


The game is featured not only on the famliar screen of the old Apple, but it' s also projected onto a wall ... IN COLOR. 


Hold it ... How is this possible?! Turns out the original game *was* in color, it's just that the VAST majority of us were playing on a system that had the much more affordable, glowing green screen. 
Who knew?! Now we all do!

And check out this lovely relic. Annabelle played Ordeal of the Hangman on a refurbished Plato V. It featured an early touchscreen.
Don't you just LOVE the wood paneling? I wish my desktop had it.

OK, so it wasn't exactly the screen that was sensitive. It used infrared technology. Beams of light crisscrossed the screen, and when you poked the screen, your finger would interrupt at least two of the beams. (Think "Battleship.") 

CJ flipped his geeky lid upon spying this in a tucked-away-corner of the newly appointed first floor. 

It's "Tennis for Two." He explains, "In case you're wondering, Tennis for Two was one of the earliest sports video games, and one of the earliest video games ever (one of the only games that I can think of as being older would be the Cathode Ray Tube Amusement Device, which predated TfT by 11 years). Tennis for Two was designed by physicist William Higinbotham in 1958 for display at the Brookhaven National Laboratory's annual public exhibition after learning that the government research institution's Donner Model 30 analog computer could simulate trajectories with wind resistance. People unaware of Tennis for Two will often mistake it for a Pong clone, when Tennis for Two predated Pong by 17 years."

No ordinary "desktop computer," the 160-A (seen below) took 'desktop' computing to a whole new, er, old level. 

Designed by Seymour Cray and introduced in 1960, the 160-A was both the computer and the desk.

The 160-A had a paper-tape reader, and a punch. That's where this typewriter looking machine came in.

Oh, and perhaps we should mention there's a 3D printed, self-driving car on site.

That's right, you can slide on into the seats of the Strati and take it for a virtual spin!
Made by Local Motors, I kind of loved the fact that this vehicle was 3D printed in Detroit, Motor City. (https://localmotors.com/3d-printed-car)

Floor to ceiling, no detail is overlooked, including this gorgeous light fixture, its inner cubes made of circuit boards. 

Here's what 13-year-old CJ had to say about his first visit to the new first floor.

For about three years now, my family has frequently visited the Living Computer Museum, a Paul Allen museum dedicated to (functional) computers and video game consoles of the past and present. Since we write about LCM on the blog nearly every time we visit it, and LCM is undergoing a makeover and rebranding, our family was invited to go to a special preview of the newer version of the museum, now called the Living Computers: museum + labs.

For the new version of the LCM building, we brought multiple cameras with us. If I remember correctly, these would include the iPhone 5, two Nikon cameras, a green Japanese Sony camera, and even a vintage Polaroid 600, to suit the theme of older computers and game consoles. I was very interested as to what the visit to the new version of the museum would be like.

In a couple of prior visits to LCM (such as the Seattle Retro Gaming Expo and a showcase of computers they had in storage), on the bottom floor of the building, a large, cold warehouse section of the building was used. I remember hearing a couple times before that they wanted to do something more permanent with the warehouse space, such as a new part of the museum. Prior to putting together the new section of the building in the former warehouse space, the primary "museum" part of the building was and is on the second floor, which still houses most of the vintage computers (such as the Apple ][ or Atari 400). With the new, improved version of the warehouse space, the LCM museum is now much larger, and also has a greater focus on modern-day technology and computers.

When we walked inside the transformed warehouse, we were greeted by Aaron Alcorn, Ph.D, a curator of LCM who would be one of our tour guides during our visit to the museum. Aaron often told us about the various things we were seeing, such as a replica of the original Tennis for Two machine(!). In case you're wondering, Tennis for Two, according to Wikipedia, was one of the earliest sports video games, and one of the earliest video games ever (one of the only games that I can think of as being older would be the Cathode Ray Tube Amusement Device, which predated TfT by 11 years). Apparently, Tennis for Two was designed by physicist William Higinbotham in 1958 for display at the Brookhaven National Laboratory's annual public exhibition after learning that the government research institution's Donner Model 30 analog computer could simulate trajectories with wind resistance. People unaware of Tennis for Two will often mistake it for a Pong clone, when Tennis for Two predated Pong by 17 years.

According to Aaron, the replica of the Tennis for Two machine was actually built using the help of the original machine documentation. The replica that we played at LCM was apparently built using modern-day counterparts of the original components in the Tennis for Two machine. Also, some software bugs from the original TfT were fixed in this version, which, combined with the fact that the tennis ball is now circular instead of round, makes the replica at LCM a nice, if inaccurate rendition of Tennis for Two. Finally, we were told that they actually wanted to sell kits so you could build your own version of the Tennis for Two replica at home.

Personally, my favorite part of the new museum was probably the Virtual Reality section, located in the Southeast corner of the building. In the VR section of the museum, there is a large glass case, featuring several VR headsets from a set of odd-looking goggles from 1939 to Nintendo's ill-fated Virtual Boy (yes, *that* Virtual Boy) from 1995. Inside the VR section, there is a subsection with a clear floor, where you can walk around with the expensive HTC Vive headset and controllers. With the Vive, I was able to play two primary games. The first one revolved around one of the controllers in my hands becoming a spaceship, and I had to shoot incoming enemies by pulling the trigger on my controller, and dodge by moving my hand in real life. I eventually lost, so I chose to play a different game in VR. I think the next one was called Aperture Lab, and in it, you had to play as a test subject in Aperture Science from Valve's Portal series. In Aperture Lab, You had to pull various drawers out and push them back in for god-knows-what (the default male robotic narrating voice is hard to understand). Shortly after, you have to perform a repair on a stout robot known as Atlas, and if you fail, then you presumably get your room flooded with Neurotoxin.

All in all, I enjoyed the preview visit to the new version of Living Computers: Museum + Labs, and I recommend visiting there if you're ever in SoDo.

And following are 12-year-old Annabelle's observations

The former Living Computer Museum just opened a new area, the labs, to the press. It will be opened to the public on Friday. The labs in an area dedicated to teaching people from any age group about technology, from ocean cameras that track sharks to learning to program games. The labs are so cool, that I honestly can’t put it into words.

The first thing we went to see was the 3D printed models of the Utah Teapot and the Stanford Rabbit, two of the first 3d models ever made on a computer. We then went to see Baxter, a large robot that could be programmed to do simple tasks and was built to work alongside humans. We also played with the “Dash” bots, which were small, round, cute robots that you control with a tablet. My favorite part of the labs was the digital art area. When you walk in, there is a large screen with flowers that will bloom more wherever the people are standing in the room. There was also an interactive game on a table called “The table where little people live”, which used an Xbox Kinect to track where your hand or body is. It was super fun to interact with everything there, and I can’t wait to see it up and running for the public! 

Below is a Seattle news station's sneak video peek at the space if you're interested.

Science Sunday

BRAINY: Sunday, the Seahakws didn't play until 5:30, which means we had most of the day to do other stuff. (And yes, I realize that makes me sound shallow and sports minded. Go Hawks.)

We chose to start our day off at Pacific Science Center, which was hosting a Life Sciences weekend. I'll let Annabelle narrate you through our experience. ... 

The Pacific Science Center’s Life Sciences Week was an event that revolved around the science of things like DNA and blood, and what makes us us! The first booth we visited was about “Ask Doctor Universe”, a website that lets kids ask science questions and get in-depth answers.

(Editor's note: This morning, I asked Annabelle if she'd looked at the Dr. Universe Web site and she said she had and that she really liked it and that she especially liked that Dr. Universie is a woman and that they call her Dr. not "miss" or something. Back to Annabelle's narration ... )

After that we went to a booth were they gave us a sheet of paper that had dots of color on it, like a code. The codes consisted of 4 colors, just like DNA. We decoded it and got a card of the “monster” that had the features that the code (its DNA) told us. 

We also visited a cool exhibit with a VR video called “The Click Effect”, about dolphins, whales, and how they communicate.

The last couple of booths we stopped at were also really cool, like a booth about how plants grow and plant “stem cells.”

And there was a table where you can touch actual brains, both human and animal (with disposable gloves, of course). It was super cool.

End of Annabelle narration. A couple things she left out included a booth about surface tension ... 

and a booth all about blood types. 

All in all, it was an awesome two hours or so. 

Oh, and the Seahawks beat the Patriots. #GoHawks!

Tagging Along

THE WISHING TREE: I'm not going to lie, our goals when leaving the house this morning were not that lofty. We wanted to go find some Pokemon for our Pokemon GO games, and were just trying to get a walk in.

Along the way, we encountered something rather remarkable. 

Fall is putting on its leafy show, and along the Ship Canal, between the Fremont and Ballard bridges, the trees' leaves are resplendent shades of orange, gold and red. 

One big tree just west of the Fremont Bridge caught our eye. Dozens of little cards hung from its lowest branches.

Around the trunk, we saw this sign. ... 

Dozens of passersby had added tags to the tree. Some of the wishes were big, broad and beautiful.

 Some were heartbreaking.

Some caused a lump in my throat. 

For whatever reason, this particular tag continually danced in a microwind, while all the others hung still.

Some tags went to the dogs ...

while others went to the cats.

I wholeheartedly agree with this tag!

Also along that same stretch, we head a steam whistle in the distance. Before too long, the lovely old Virginia V came gliding past.

According to Wikipedia, this steamboat is the last operational example of a Puget Sound Mosquito Fleet steamer. Virginia V was once part of a large fleet of small passenger and freight carrying ships that linked the islands and ports of Puget Sound in Washington State in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Virginia V's original route was between Tacoma and Seattle, and between Vashon Island and the Kitsap Peninsula.

Win Some, Lose Some

YESTERDAY, ALL MY TROUBLES SEEMED SO FAR AWAY: So, there was a presidential election here in the States yesterday. 

It didn't turn out like we expected. Or like any of the pollsters or pundits expected.

Today, our family talked about the myriad of reasons for the surprise outcome. Michael Moore was one of the few people in the world who saw this coming. His explanation is worth a a read. 

Naturally, we also talked about the electoral college, and how it can be that a person wins the popular.majority vote, but they don't win the election.

IN HAPPIER NEWS: On Annabelle's birthday a couple of weeks ago, we stopped in to a favorite restaurant, LunchBox Laboratory, for dinner. 

Annabelle's always looking for a coloring sheet/kids' menu when we go out, and that evening she entered a coloring contest.

She only had four rather crappy wax crayons to work with (red, blue, yellow and green), but she managed to produce this.

A few days ago, we received an email letting us know she was the winner of the coloring contest.

She was expecting a t-shirt or something as her prize. Imagine how thrilled she was to get this ...

Needless to say, she was quite pleased. :)

Scenes from the City

HERSTORY IN THE MAKING?: So, in case you haven't heard, this year there's a presidential election in the United States. Here in Washington, it's an all-mail-in event. Wanting to save ourselves the stamps and make sure our ballots got to where they needed to go, this afternoon, we stopped by the ballot drop box outside of the Ballard library on Monday. It was quite the sight there.

There were four police officers (two on foot, two on bikes), at least two elections officials, and at least a couple of poll watchers. We've dropped ballots at this box for years and had never seen anything like this before. Perhaps it's due to the extraordinarily ugly rhetoric this campaign has been filled with. :/

There were dozens of voters approaching the box. Some of them took photos of Annabelle dropping a ballot in the box, in an election where a woman has the chance of being elected president of the United States. Kind of a big deal. 

I can only imagine what Tuesday will be like at this drop box, when the ballots are due.

Oh, and, by the way, if you think you can't be bothered to vote where you are. check out this guy. It's astronaut Shane Kimbrough. "Vote where you float" is NASA's motto. 


Astronauts are "pretty much apolitical," he told reporters last month. "And I'll be glad to welcome the new president, whoever that is."

Actually, I'd surmise astronauts might be pretty darn interested in who supports NASA's budget. ...

THE WRITE STUFF:  We had a wonderful weekend. Sunday afternoon, we headed to the central/main branch of Seattle Public Libraries for an event as part of the "Seattle Writes" series. This particular meeting was geared for people looking to have picture books published. We're a family of writers with an abundance of ideas put on paper, but we need to get them off of our shelves and hard drives and out there in the world, so attending the symposium seemed a good idea.

Here's Annabelle's write up of the 90-minute presentation: 

"Picture Book Writing: A Panel Discussion" was an event part of Seattle Writes, a series of conferences and meeting celebrating The Seattle Public Library’s 125^th anniversary. The panel for Picture Book Writing consisted of 5 authors: Jennifer K. Mann, the moderator; Liz Wong, a fairly new author with one book published; Ben Clanton, an experienced author with many books; Julie Paschkis, a children’s book “veteran” who uses paint for her drawings; and Jessixa Bagley, an author/illustrator who specializes in books about animals or animal characters.

One of the first points that they touched on was that in picture books (and by extension, children’s books), you should let the pictures do the talking. You shouldn’t show a picture of a potato and say “This is a potato.” in the text. You could, however, show a potato with googly eyes and say “This potato is hungry.”, as author/illustrator Ben Clanton said. It helps to have the words and pictures say different things because it keeps the reader interested and they pay more attention to the pictures and words.

The second point they talked about was taking inspiration from others. As Julie Paschkis put it, you “take other’s vegetables and make your own soup.” One of the places you could take inspiration from is spending time around your target audience and finding out what they’re interested in. The panel members also said that you should make the characters in your book relatable, putting them in situations your audience might find themselves in, allowing your audience to find a solution to their problem through the book.

They also touched lightly on other topics such as habits, where many of them said that they worked through and through on the words before inserting illustrations, and then “sliced and diced” parts that were unnecessary after pictures were added. The panel was super interesting and gave me many ideas on how to improve my writing. In general, the best thing you can do is just keep going, and even if you don’t like the current direction you writing is going in, you’ll hit a good idea eventually.

And here is CJ's report ... 

Our family frequently visits branches of the Seattle Public Library, such as the Magnolia branch in our neighborhood, as well as the Ballard branch, which is about 3 miles away. (Sunday), we actually visited the massive main branch of the Library, which is located in downtown Seattle. More specifically, we went for the "Seattle Writes: Picture Book Writing and Illustrating" event, which is part of the Seattle Writes program. Our family has written multiple picture books and actually made physical dummies of them, but we're having trouble getting the books published. We visited the Picture Book Writing and Illustrating event to learn more about picture book writing, and possibly learn how to get our books published.

At the event, there were five different picture book authors. From left to right (or right to left from the authors' point of view) at their desk, they were Jennifer K. Mann, whose book "Two Speckled Eggs" won a Washington State Book Award in the Picture Book category in 2015; Liz Wong, who debuted with the book "Quackers" this year; Ben Clanton, a member of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators; Julie Paschkis, who has apparently published 30 books since 1992(!); and Jessixa Bagley, whose artistic career has been a mix of comics, fine art, and illustration.

The Picture Book Writing and Illustrating event lasted 90 minutes, from 2 P.M. to 3:30 P.M., where we learned about multiple interesting writing and illustrating techniques used to make picture books. For example, one technique I find interesting, while it seems like it's common, is to use the text to tell a story that is not literally telling the story depicted in the illustrations, but is still related in some form or fashion. For example, one of the authors showed us a book (I cannot remember if it was by her or was made by another author) that showed a hedgehog that was about to move away from home. One of the pages showed an anteater friend of the hedgehog catching the hedgehog from the sky after being flung up by a seesaw, and the text accompanying the image said something along the lines of "I will always be there for you." When you look just at the illustration, it obviously means that the anteater will protect the hedgehog from danger by catching her from the sky, but in the context of the whole story, it can mean that the anteater will always support the hedgehog during tough times (it's kind of hard to describe).

Another thing that is less of a writing style, and more of a writing tip, is that you might use other people's vegetables to create your own soup. In my interpretation, this means that while you might use familiar ideas from previous books made by other authors (such as premise ideas or character archetypes), you should create something that is original in some capacity, or, more specifically, make your own, unique book using the ideas.

Sources:http://www.spl.org/audiences/adults/seattle-writes/seattle-writes-calendar#/?i=2http://www.jenniferkmann.com/http://www.lizwongillustration.com/http://www.benclanton.com/https://www.scbwi.org/members-public/benjamin-clanton-2https://juliepaschkis.com/http://www.jessixa.com/

The event was held on the library's fourth floor, where there is a collection of meeting rooms. We'd never been there before. It was a memorable space, to say the least.


The hallways connecting the rooms are red.

And so are the walls. And the stairs. And the ceilings.

CJ was thrilled to find the porthole below. It offered another glimpse of what seems to be his favorite thing about that library, a cool/creepy art installation in a wall next to an escalator.

Called "Braincast," moving images of faces are projected on egg-like orbs and the 'eggs' talk to passersby. The work is by Tony Oursler.

There was one wall on the floor where you could see something other than red!

SPACEFEST FUN: On Saturday, we headed to the Museum of Flight for their annual Spacefest. It's a terrific event spanning multiple days. Unfortunately, we only made it for one day. Next year, we vow to do better! 

I'll let the kids tell you a bit more about the presentation we attended. Here's a photo of them taking notes. 

CJ's report is up first ...

From November 4 to November 6, the Museum of Flight, a frequent haunt for us, hosted the SpaceFest 2016: Ladies Who Launch event, which, according to their website, was their 3rd annual SpaceFest. This year's theme was Ladies Who Launch, as its title implies, is primarily focused around women's role in the past, present, and future of aviation and spaceflight.

For the event's three-day duration, there were sixteen events, the first of which, "VR Experiences with VALVe", began on 11/4 at 5 P.M., while the final event, "Breaking the Chains of Gravity", ended at 4:30 P.M. on 11/6 (this is the only event we went to). As I just said, Breaking the Chains of Gravity, hosted by Amy Shira Teitel, a scientist, author, and journalist of Vintage Space, was the only presentation we attended this year. In what I assume is a contrast to most of the rest of the events at SpaceFest 2016, the Breaking the Chains of Gravity presentation actually had little to do with women in space, but was rather largely about the obscure, ill-fated Dyna-Soar program from the United States Air Force.

One of the first slides we were shown in Ms. Teitel's presentation had a black-and-white picture of a man riding on a cartoon dinosaur, alongside the text "The Life and Death of the Dyna-Soar". Teitel soon after reminded us that the cartoon dinosaur was not what the Dyna-Soar was or looked like, but she wished that it could've looked like that.

We then were shown slides of the iconic Space Shuttle, known for the STS missions from 1972 to 2011. According to the presentation, the STS missions were approved in 1972 by NASA, and designed to do 50 flights a year, and be able to do interplanetary missions and satellite recoveries. However, according to Amy, the Space Shuttles only did 4 missions a year, did only 3 unmanned interplanetary missions, and only 5 satellite recoveries throughout its entire 39-year service. However, Amy then brought up the Dyna-Soar again. Apparently, unlike the Space Shuttles, which lived up to the original idea in some capacity, the Dyna-Soar, throughout its 6-year "run", only resulted in 1 mockup, 7 frustrated astronauts, 1 frustrated Air Force, and 1 frustrated Space Agency.

Evidently, the Dyna-Soar was a failure in several ways, though the STS missions, which began 9 years after the cancellation of the Dyna-Soar, proved that an airplane-styled space launch vehicle could be done. Soon after, Amy went to the background of the Dyna-Soar itself, teaching us about Eugen Sänger, an Austrian scientist who designed the theoretical "Skip-Glide Vehicle" in the mid-thirties. If you compare pictures of the Dyna-Soar and concept art of the Skip-Glide vehicle, you might notice some similarity in the airplane-like designs. Eugen was born in 1905 in Austria, and died in 1964 in Germany. The Skip-Glide vehicle would be, as Amy put it, a 2-stage sled, that, unfortunately, lacked good propulsion in its design.

Eugen went to the Nazi-dominated Austrian military, where, in an attempt to get the Austrian army interested in the Skip-Glide Vehicle, Eugen added bombs to the Skip-Glide Vehicle, essentially turning it into a design for a weapon of war. The Austrian army was not interested, so Eugen had to go to the German army, also dominated by the Nazis, where he was redirected to the Luftwaffe, which the Nazis also ruled. The Luftwaffe was interested in the Skip-Glide Vehicle, because while it sounded like a crazy idea, it could've potentially helped in the battle against the Allied powers. Meanwhile, Wernher Von Braun, a much more famous engineer from the Nazi Bloc, was working on the Aggregate rockets, one of which would become the first man-made vehicle to fly in space. Sources: http://www.museumofflight.org/Plan-Your-Visit/Calendar-of-Events/3083/spacefest-2016-ladies-who-launch

                                            Artist's rendition of Dyna-Soar

And following is Annabelle's account ...

At the Museum of Flight, we listened to a lecture by Amy Shira Teital about the life and death of a spacecraft named the “Dyna-soar”. The Dyna-soar was a craft designed by Eugen Sänger, an inventor born in the Czech Republic in 1905. He started thinking about the Dyna-soar, then called the skip-glide vehicle, when he was experimenting with liquid fuel. He had the idea for a vehicle that could propel itself through the atmosphere, and then it would stop using fuel and “skip” on the atmosphere like a flat stone on a pond. It had a very flat bottom (which looks very much like the space shuttle we have today) that would allow it to skip.

Eugen Sänger showed his creation to the military but they refused to fund it, saying that it needed to be weaponized. When he did make it a bomber, they called him insane and refused again. Then he turned to Nazi Germany, who said they would fund the project. He was given a laboratory to work on his idea, disguised as an aeronautics research facility. He was just going to complete the project when Wernhern Von Brown, another Nazi engineer and designer of the Saturn 5, came out with the V2, his newest aggregate rocket. It was a very powerful missile and it completely overshadowed Sänger’s skip-glide vehicle. Sänger’s project was shut down, but he refused to give up.

After avoiding Stalin, who was very interested in him, Sänger settled for America and brang his project to the US. He teamed up with Bell Aircraft, a company who had made a vehicle called the X1, one of the first planes to break the sound barrier. Bell wanted the skip-glide to break the sound barrier as well, aiming for it to go 370 miles above the Earth’s surface at mach 20. This was too ambitious, however, and was promptly reduced to mach 7. The project was retitled the “Dyna-soar” and was going to be great, if Sputnik didn’t show up and ruin everyone’s day. Shortly after being shown up by Sputnik, the NACA, standing for The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, disbanded and was replaced by the now familiar National Aeronautics and Space Agency, or NASA. NASA was less focused on breaking the sound barrier and more focused on getting men into space. The Dyna-soar was given a cockpit and was going to be the first to launch man into space, but got one-upped again by the flight of Yuri Gagarin, further dashing Dyna-soar’s dreams.

At this point, nobody was very interested in Dyna-soar. It was eventually de-funded and became purely research. The only way it could survive would be to answer questions about the sound barrier, but those were promptly being answered by the Gemini program. Eventually Dyna-soar was flat out canceled, with the awkward trasitional phase of the Apollo missions taking its place. One can only imagine what could have happened if instead of funding Apollo, NASA got straight to the point and got the the Space Shuttle instead of an odd, splashdown-heavy transitional period. We could have done so many things so much earliet, such as building the ISS and maybe even landing on mars. It turns out the Dyna-soar’s name was oddly fitting- before long, it became extinct.

 Boeing mock up of Dyna-Soar/X-20

After the lecture, the kids got to meet Amy Shira Teitel. She autographed her book, "Breaking the Chains of Gravity" for them.