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New Mexico and Technology
• Nuclear Energy Research
• High Altitude Survival (Space Medicine)
• Rocket Tests
• And more…
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Ted Spitzmiller
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Objective
• To understand more about New Mexico and its involvement with high technology…– Pioneers, engineers, and astronauts– Events that alter and illuminate our time
Who Am I?• Aviation and Space Historian
• Graduate US Army Guided Missile School
• Taught Nuclear Weapons 3 years
• Flight Instructor for 40+ years
• Computer Guy for 50 years (MS/CIS)
• Invented the Internet (with Al Gore)
• Mrs. Kritter’s Dad
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Birth of the Bomb 4
I started building models
airplanes at the age of 7
4Aviation
Birth of the Bomb 5
New Mexico’s role in the Birth of the Atomic Age
World War II
Birth of the Bomb 604/19/23 6
A Bit of Background• 1939--Certain isotopes of
Uranium could be split (fission) to produce energy.
• Enough to make a bomb?• War was raging in Europe.• Germany had been in the
forefront of the research.• America build an atomic bomb…
if one could be made.
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OSRD Creates Manhattan Project-1942
Directed by Brig Gen Leslie Groves Four secret laboratories: •Los Alamos, New Mexico
– Location chosen for its remoteness. – Physics and engineering "think-tank"– Final assembly of bombs, from
materials/components •Originally a few hundred people… required over 2,000.•Lots of problems and secrecy.
Irony
• Many of the physicist who worked on the project were driven out of Europe by Nazi anti-Semitism.
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Find
Los Alamos
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J. Robert Oppenheimer• UC Berkley physicist
• Chosen by Groves to lead bomb development effort
• Understood the problem, the resources available, and the people
Los Alamos 1945
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Los Alamos Today
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Bomb Required Enriched u235• Only 1 in 600 atoms of natural uranium is
u-235
• Bomb requires >90% u-235
• Numerous methods to separate u235 from u238– Gaseous diffusion & cyclotron best known
• Oakridge, Tenn
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Two Methods of Creating a
Bomb
Purity
Density supercritical
Mass
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Trinity Site
Location to test the bomb!
To be detonated on
Top of a Tower
• Avoid extensive fallout
• Take advantage of the Mach-Y effect
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Gadget Raised to the Top
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From the start of the laboratory at Los Alamos in March 1943 to the first test in July 1945 was only 2 years and four months.
Explosive energy equivalent to 20,000 tons of TNT
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Decision to use the
weapon is another story
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Hiroshima 1945—Little Boy
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Hiroshima Today
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What about the German Effort? That’s another story.
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The Atom Spies—Yet another story
Trinity Site TodayOpen to visitorsfirst weekend of October and April
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Birth of the Bomb 27
Questions?
Local Museums
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Let’s Talk Rockets
Robert Goddard• Father of Modern
Rocketry
• Experimentalist
• Launched first successful liquid fuel rocket
• March 16, 1926
Goddard Moves from
Massachusetts to Roswell
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V-2 – First Large Liquid Fuel Rocket
• Developed by Wernher von Braun in Germany during WWII.
• Surface to surface missile
• Send 2000 pound explosive warhead (payload) 200 miles
Wernher von Braun Operation Paperclip
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Technology Transfer
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Launched From White Sands
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Testing Moved to Cape Canaveral, Florida as Rockets
Grew Larger
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V-2 Comparison of Saturn V & Shuttle
• Saturn V sent men to the moon 1968-72
• Launched Skylab Space Station 1973
• 250,000 lbs. To earth orbit
• Shuttle 65,000 pounds to earth orbit
Shuttle 4.4 million lbs. 6 million lbs. thrust
Saturn V 6.0 million lbs. 7.5 million lbs. thrust
Space Medicine
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Dr. Randy Lovelace - 1943 High Altitude Bailout from 40,200 feet
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Original Mercury Astronaut’s
Medical Tests at Lovelace Clinic
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High Altitude Ballooning
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Using High
Altitude Balloons
to test Survival
Equipment
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Lt. Joe Kittinger’s
record parachute
jump
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102,800 feet down
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International Balloon Museum
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Rocket Sleds TestEffects of High Speed
Ejection
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New Mexico Museum Of Space History
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And There is… Roswell
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Aliens!
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Time Line to Space
Tsiolkovsky
1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000
Goddard
Oberth
Kittinger-Free Fall
Stapp-Rocket Sled
Von Braun V-2
Glenn
Armstrong
Space Shuttle
Challenger Columbia
Space Race
ISS
YWB
New Mexico… A Prominent Player in “Advanced Technologies”
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