Today, the first man in space. The University of
Houston's College of Engineering presents this
series about the machines that make our
civilization run, and the people whose ingenuity
created them.
Who was the first
man in space? Well, Yuri Gagarin, of course. Still,
you've heard me talk about priority. In this case,
I have a problem in deciding what to call
space.
Our atmosphere trails off exponentially. As we
rise, it grows thinner and thinner. But there's
still a tiny bit of air pressure, even around the
International Space Station. It's only some three
quadrillionths of sea-level pressure; but it's not
zero, and it does exert drag. So, are those
astronauts really in space?
Chemist Gay-Lussac set a
balloon altitude record in 1804 -- he claimed to've
reached 23,000 feet (although his estimate may've
been high). And breathing apparatus had yet to be
invented. I'm sure it felt like space,
even though it wasn't as high as people go today
when they climb Everest without oxygen tanks. On
the other hand, you'd hardly say that you were in
space when you ride a jet plane at half again
Gay-Lussac's altitude.
The world record for a manned balloon ascent is
presently 22 miles, where the air pressure is one
fiftieth of its value down here. But, as a child, I
was very aware of the record-breaking balloon
flights being made by Jean and Jeanette Piccard. In
1934, they reached an altitude of eleven miles.
Later, Life magazine ran a photo they'd
taken on one of their flights. It showed inky black
sky above, and the arc of Earth's horizon in the
distance.
I don't know whether the namesake of Star
Trek's Jean Luc Picard was these Piccards or a
seventeenth-century astronomer. But I like to think
it was the Piccards who so touched my childhood.
They certainly were space travelers in my eyes.
Still, all human space travel has, so far, taken
place within Earth's influence. It has stayed
either within the fringes of our atmosphere, or
well within the reach of Earth's gravity field. The
gravitational force that drives the orbital path of
the Space Station is very little less up there,
than it is at Earth's surface.
The few humans who've walked on the moon seemed
to've escaped Earth's gravity field, and entered
into the Moon's lesser gravity. But that's an
illusion. For the moon's orbit is dictated just as
surely by our gravity as the Space Station's orbit
is.
So I offer a contrarian answer to the question,
"Who was first in space?" The question has not yet
been answered. Maybe it'll be your
daughter. I'm waiting to see us step clear of
Earth's gravity as well as its atmosphere. I'm
still waiting for us to truly begin our great
adventure in space.
My father, a St. Paul Dispatch science
editor, told me about his conversations with Jean
and Jeanette Piccard, over in Minneapolis. I still
see the curve of Earth in Piccard photos, and (with
apologies to Yuri Gagarin) they'll remain my first
travelers in space until we do what we were
meant to do -- until we finally step clear
of our Island home.
I'm John Lienhard, at the University of Houston,
where we're interested in the way inventive minds
work.
(Theme music)
There were three Piccards exploring both the
stratosphere and the ocean depths in the 1930s. They
were twin brothers, Drs. Auguste and Jean Piccard,
and Jean's wife, Dr. Jeaneatte Piccard. In 1974,
Jeanette Piccard became one of the first women
ordained as an Episcopal priest. Astronomer Jean
Picard lived from 1620 to 1682 in France. Star Trek's
Jean Luc Picard [was] also born in France, in AD
2305.
For more on Jean Piccard, see:
http://www.aem.umn.edu/info/history/piccard.shtml
For more on Jeanette Piccard, see:
http://www.itdean.umn.edu/inventing/98fall/retrospect.html
For a convenient calculation of high-altitude
barometric pressures, see:
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/kinetic/barfor.html
