Six Shuttle Orbiting Earth May 21st!

Added: 2026-05-23

[00:00:00]Welcome everybody to Stay Curious. I'm your host Mark Marquette. My pleasure to be broadcasting live with co-producer Marty Winkl here inside the American Space Museum in downtown Titusville, Florida on a coming up with Memorial Day weekend. Memorial Day weekend Thursday.

[00:00:19]So hopefully everybody's got a lot of plans. Marty, what it is? Memorial Day weekend, Marty. And uh so uh we're glad that you're all here with us. And uh thought I was saying something wrong there, but it's all >> Yeah.

[00:00:37]>> I just misunderstood what you said.

[00:00:39]>> Oh, did I say >> you said >> Labor Day weekends and Memorial Day?

[00:00:43]>> Memorial Day Memorial Day Thursday.

[00:00:46]>> Yeah.

[00:00:46]>> So I was going to say it's Monday, but I don't >> Memorial Day Thursday weekend here.

[00:00:50]Getaway. One of my favorite weekends of the year. I love the ND500 and all the racing, all the beautiful blue skies and puffy white clouds and green foilage on this beautiful planet of ours that we're so lucky to be on.

[00:01:05]Right, Aussie the space manatee here beside me today, decked out in an orange helmet. And uh we have this mascot that we're going to promote or wh There you go, Aussie. Let me put you back in space again. Of course, I'm a fool with this more than my program. There you are. So, hope you like that, Rosalie. She makes some cute characters, dolls that we'll uh show some pictures of again one day.

[00:01:30]So, uh big day today, Marty. Let me get Aussie up here a minute. Big day today, Marty, as we have a Space X, uh Starship launch today. Okay, this is going to be a big deal. I've been looking at it a little bit online. Uh, I didn't put pictures up of Chris Lay Marie, but there it is right there.

[00:01:55]Okay. Couple of his pictures we put on Facebook. Chris, thanks for sharing that. It's after 6:00 launch. So, wherever you're at, put it on your phones. Watch it going up. What's really interesting, Marty, is uh Jim Bailing uh was showing me these pictures and Okay, why aren't you coming up? It shows the um uh connectors here. When you look at this right here and on the other side are two round and then there's two round ones down there. This is the docking fueling for the starship to be fueled in space.

[00:02:33]There there's four uh points two on each ports. Marty.

[00:02:39]>> Yeah. You know what's what's what's a thousand billion dollars here and a thousand billion dollars there, right?

[00:02:46]But uh let me beam you beautiful people up here so we can get a roll call. Mitch Rothman was on yesterday and thank you Mitch for being here. Uh we had a good board of directors meeting with Marty's also involved with that.

[00:03:02]And uh we are building today six shuttles orbiting Earth on um May 21st.

[00:03:09]And I like to juxtapose space history uh even half a century apart sometimes on there. Uh and Tom Sound say almost forgot about Bill Rawlings. Happy Thursday. Thank you Bill RG Jubilee and uh uh and we got real fest in one month here. We'll be uh having a lot of fun at the high place a month from now. So let's thank the Roman family.

[00:03:37]Gohistravel.org org. They just put up some new uh sites uh history of the presidents. They've actually been to every presidential uh tomb and birthplace and all that stuff. So, Raman, thank you for your uh unfailing contributions financially as well as talking about us wherever you go in your travels around the world. In fact, they're in Japan. Marty, as I recall, uh Rama telling me he they were going to Japan, Mal and Barat. So, uh I'm sure they're enjoying that and I'm jealous of all the good sushi they're eating.

[00:04:15]Here's our Magnificent 7 Shuttle Fest 5, our fundraiser. Uh things are going good. We're selling tickets every day.

[00:04:23]And this is again a fundraiser with a Friday details starting next week. I'll get the holiday over of what you can expect uh in detail, but you can expect a two-hour autograph session with all these astronauts and a few others days to celebrate. One that been trying to do this show for two days and then we had Carl Klanch on here talking about Sinco de Shepard day that they celebrated out hangar sea that I was part of that 55.

[00:04:53]So he is five. Yep. That'd be 71. He considers Fairfax on three space shuttle flights. Took the um doesn't come to me.

[00:05:02]Who is the other person? He was also called a 24VT prior to launch. And I'd be with you.

[00:05:08]I'd be nervous as could be. Uh the first true musician to go to space. He has there if you're a musician a Martin back particularly acoust. So the retired US N 71 years old space museum over the I'm sorry Bob's 80 wanting to get to the great state of Ohio timing to know you the know you and Bob a marine colonel and Bob a marine colonel uh Vietnam space visitors complex uh got to talk to Tom a little bit uh and u you know what he said to me Marty he said I've seen a few of your stay curious podcasts with with Nick Thomas. Thank you for what you're doing to preserve the shuttle era's memory. And I about fell over when he said that to me. Uh and of course Joe Tanner, he tells me that all the time.

[00:06:04]We've gotten to know him. And we, you know, sometimes you you kind of don't want to get too chummy with some some VIPs. And uh well, Joe Tanner wants me to get chummy with him. He's a good guy.

[00:06:17]he wants to know about the museum and uh so we'll be talking more JT shows and hopefully getting him on occasionally on remote because he was all up to that.

[00:06:28]But it was their weekend last weekend.

[00:06:30]Uh we had a lot of pictures and on Facebook and our friends also shared that like Carlton Bailey, Mark Usak, Tom Usak were there. Uh and uh Chris Calli and I we just kind of just absorbed it.

[00:06:43]In fact, I don't think I took one selfie with me with any astronaut. Not many pictures at all. It's just a fun thing.

[00:06:50]So, we got some sort of a buffering issue again, Marty, that uh has popped up. So, we're going to attribute that to our uh carrier here, and I'll pass that on to our IT guy. So, am I freezing up and looking spooky or or what's going on there, gang? seems fine now though, Steve Jokum says. And Steve and I will be thinking about Canada up there at the uh Formula One racing going on um up there in Canada this weekend. I jonesing for that for sure. Uh don't touch it, Rosie says. Marty, don't touch anything.

[00:07:28]It's working good now. Uh all right.

[00:07:32]Well, dog gone. I guess it buffers when I don't have much to say.

[00:07:38]Apollo 10 barnstorming the moon this day in history. Okay, as we talked about that, but don't want you forget the dress rehearsal for everything but the landing done in May 1969.

[00:07:52]We're so proud to own this replica of the Grumman 1962 version of the lunar module. Had two uh docking hatches. Um, Marty tells me they were going to go down out of a rope. Okay. Down to the moon. I like when uh on Oh, I was watching Destination Moon or something the other night and they they have a a hand triangle that they hold on and the rope lowers them down to the surface.

[00:08:22]That seemed to be a really efficient way. I'd almost rather do that than climb down a ladder, Marty. Uh, but was there any consideration of doing anything but a ladder that you heard of on the Grumman lunar module?

[00:08:35]>> I know they had, I think, two, three or four different options. One was the rope. Um, I really don't remember the other ones.

[00:08:46]>> Interesting.

[00:08:46]>> Pulley system like you're talking about sounds right also.

[00:08:51]>> Uh, there is of course uh the lunar module in orbit. Uh you know that that is not LEM 9 uh spider.

[00:09:03]And right, >> yeah, I mean I meant Apollo 9, but lim three for Apollo 9. And I'm just tipping you off that many of you are like going, "Of course, Mark, I know what you're talking about." But uh limb three on Apollo 9, what's the difference between this limb uh number four?

[00:09:24]Well, Marty, tell us.

[00:09:28]Well, under landing leg number one, which is the one in front of the cabin, did not have a a touchdown probe.

[00:09:36]>> And and you see the three touchdown probes and the one missing on the left.

[00:09:40]That's where the ladder is and the the door. How long were those? Five or six feet?

[00:09:45]>> Hard to know there six, but I've heard I heard 510 also. I I never measured them.

[00:09:53]>> Uh do you know you never measured them?

[00:09:56]Okay. Uh, how was that in the in the sllo? Did they fold out or or jut out or something like that?

[00:10:03]>> They folded back.

[00:10:05]>> They folded back. So they Yeah, because you couldn't fit it in the sllo with those sticking out. So >> if you look at it carefully, you see there's a bend in the in the probe or in the leg itself.

[00:10:13]>> Uhhuh. I mean the probe.

[00:10:14]>> Okay.

[00:10:15]>> All right. The probe is laying right in front of the famous visor shot of Buzz Aldrin. They cropped that out. Hello there, Jesse, my daughter. And uh super interesting. She said she loves she said love to Marty. And if the girls are watching my granddaughters, here's Aussie the space manatee here with with me in the studio today. So um like Bies, every manatee gets a manatee sticker with it here. Uh so uh so this is a area of the moon photographed by uh Apollo 10. We talked about this the other day. A big sheet of lava filled up a basin where there were some mountain peaks that almost it probably covered up some peaks. Then as it dried, uh the rippling effect is maybe from seismic vibrations by another asteroid impact in a couple hundred miles away. Chris Call's montage to the astronauts. Uh always great. Uh there's another montage by uh Chris uh great with Jean Cernin on the left, Commander Tom Stafford and John Young there and of course President Kennedy. So we'll get off of that. All right, we had a good time talking about Apollo 10. U actually I I was just reading a news feed where some of the Aremis 2 astronauts were accosted by some hoaxers that said we didn't go to the moon. And uh uh did you see that feed, Marty?

[00:11:48]>> I saw Victor Glover and somebody. And what what was that all about?

[00:11:52]>> I heard there was some people in this in the Senate that the astronauts came in to do a I guess a talk or receive some type of recognition and they were complaining or or yelling at them saying you you know tell the truth, you know, don't fool the public. You never went to the moon, etc. >> And Victor Glover put a big hay maker on him.

[00:12:14]We wish though like Buzz did.

[00:12:18]Uh, okay. Shuttles of the month of May.

[00:12:21]You know, that is something that we tout here at the American Space Museum and Steve Jobs. Thank you, Steve, for always promoting uh our shuttles of the month on his he's not sponsored today, but he is the um uh Lake County Spaceport. That is your place for all of your uh modeling needs.

[00:12:44]Uh custom modeling needs particularly.

[00:12:46]Steve does a wonderful thing on there and once I get my act together with an assistant here I'm trying to train.

[00:12:53]We'll be sharing those on our Facebook page. Steve, thank you for that. 10 shuttles in the month of uh May. U none for Challenger or Colombia.

[00:13:05]OV 103 Discovery flew twice, but on this date, 104 Atlantis is orbiting the Earth on four different missions and 105 Endeavor on two different missions in space history. 65 tickets were punched in the month of May. All the astronauts combined on these missions are 65 of them. Now, uh, 1 2 3 4 five of them have had, uh, had two tickets punched. Okay. So, 60 different humans and 65 tickets punched is how we put it on there. And these are some charts that I hope to put together uh, when I find the right help and make a little booklet about this with a thumbnail of each of these. And then, uh, Marty and and the autograph hounds can get these autographed by the by our astronauts out there. But very interesting missions. V 30 was Venus.

[00:14:03]Mellin first threeman EVVA was he was the other astronaut. I said th he and acres did that three men on STS 49 going across the top to center of course is the Hubble telescope last prepare in 1990 folks. Okay 09. So that is 17 years since human eyeball has seen the Hubble telescope and it's it's fine. It's going to last another four or five years for sure. 132 is a hard hat mission with Dexter uh the the little robotic outdoor helper mirror uh with our friend Eileen Collins as a pilot and Charlie Precourt docked with the mayor in 97. the ne the last mission of Endeavor above Azie here 134 with the the um mass spectrome the alpha mass m magnetic spectrometer that's what the orbiting electrons are about there uh space hat was on STS77 uh a hard hat mission to the ISS in 101 which was Susan Helms the first woman to occupy the the U vehicle the space station very just three segments.

[00:15:27]Uh then the first ISS docking was in 96 STS 96 with our friend Julie Payet on that and KBO one of the most important modules up there and the largest module uh STS 124 uh are our months of May highlights there. So, what I like talking about Oh, shoot. Marty, I hit it. I accidentally hit it. Uh oh, I hit image. So, it's going to go in automatic. And you'll probably all like that. So, I can talk fast. Six. On today's date, the 21st, you got six orbiting the the Earth right now. Oh.

[00:16:07]Oh, dog on it. So uh this is the launch of STS um uh 77 and 101. Those two groups share the same date in space uh launch May uh May 19th. And they landed on the same date, May 29th. Okay. On there, uh here's a shot of the uh backdrop there. Uh >> let me see if this works. Here is the uh STS um 77.

[00:16:48]>> I'm shutting it off. See if it stays.

[00:16:50]>> Okay, you're shutting it off for advances. Dog gone. I hit one. We've got a button that we hit and it automatically throws the slides in an automatic thing. So, um uh Robert Law wants to know, "Will you have astronaut photos for sale for use for signature?" Yes, we will. We've harvested some. Thank you, Connie McDaniel, for doing that. She spent some time down at the uh our storage unit and harvested the crews uh and the pictures of the individual pictures they could get there. Uh so, uh uh today's Ashley Kendrick's birthday, my daughter's mother-in-law, so good to her. Uh curb feelers, they help prevent scratching up your wide white wall towers on Curb Street. What are they talking about there?

[00:17:38]Jubilee mentioned something about a >> yeah called a curve whiskers there.

[00:17:45]>> Okay. Um so you're going to be lucky.

[00:17:49]I'm going to whiz through this in a way.

[00:17:51]But we have STS 101 and 77 launched on the 19th. You have got also orbiting the earth right now STS 125 which doesn't come down to the 25th of the month.

[00:18:08]Then you've got STS 132, which is the Dexter, right? That's Atlantis in 2010, a year later. Then you got 84, which is the six docking with mirror. That's Atlantis. Then Endeavor is the alpha magnetic spectrometer. $1.5 billion that thing cost too, by the way.

[00:18:29]And they attached it to the space station. Uh, and then you've got uh 77 and 101 on there. That involves 39 humans orbiting the Earth right now. So, I guess we'll whiz through them here, Marty. There's one of the launches. Both night launches for 77 and 101. The 77 crew were Star Trek fans. And there's Runo doing the Vulcan talk sign there.

[00:18:55]Um, you can go ahead Marty. This was one of the experiments they had a solar sail wind experiment there that was very interesting uh unfolded there. Then you had the Hollowitz Hall wholesale was the commander of this uh probe uh to uh 101 and uh wait a minute was 101 and let me look up something here Marty um 101 and 77 was um 77 in this book I'm thinking Um, yeah. Okay. I don't know. Susan Helms was in that picture in and she's also in 101 in there. So, uh, yeah, Susan Helms and 101 is when she went up to the space station.

[00:19:54]Okay. And there's the launch of 101 going up there. All right. Then next up is the crew. Nice close to the 101 launch.

[00:20:05]Okay. Love this picture. The blue diamonds of the SSME. Exactly what they want to see. 101 crew there. Uh uh they dropped off Susan Helms in the uh Russian URIF on the space station. Had the first glass cockpit 101 did. See that Aussie manatee there? Glass cockpit. Look how beautiful that looks.

[00:20:30]And there's a spacew walk there. I think by uh Voss doing a spacew walk there with some big piece of hardware there like a big nut or bolt there. So there you have him there. It was um and it was Atlantis that we had. And there you look at that.

[00:20:48]That is the reveal at Kenny Space Center. All right. Behind that you can stop that Marty real quick. behind that scrim there. You actually think it's part of the movie that they just showed on the scrim. And when they reveal it, oh my gosh.

[00:21:06]Uh you can't believe that it's there.

[00:21:08]There is um uh Yuri Gagarin on a slideshow on Atlantis. And there's the other side of Atlantis with the payload bay and the arm. So well done.

[00:21:18]The astronauts love it. Mike Baker told me he just looks up there and can't believe he's on. And there's the moon landing they projected on there, the Apollo 11 uh TV uh film on there. So, so there's 84 and uh then you got 125. Let's see. 84 and 125 of course is the Hubble.

[00:21:44]Next one there, this is the dawning of course the telescope and and space uh galaxies all that it's about the hidden meaning here. And here is uh Atlantis, a new dawn age at the International Space Station. Is it the sun's rising? And you got this was a big hard hat mission up there. And then the alpha magnetic spectrometer, $1.5 billion dollars that does things with uh cosmic rays and stuff that cannot be done on Earth. So uh there you go. Uh Tom Selano said 84 84 four was the only landing he saw. Uh and uh and you love that reveal. Yeah, Cliffy. It's really something. So now Marty, that froze up there, huh?

[00:22:32]>> That's the last one, right?

[00:22:33]>> Yeah. So is that why they did that?

[00:22:36]>> I think so.

[00:22:37]>> So maybe I can go Oh, I can't advance.

[00:22:39]No, wait. It won't let me advance.

[00:22:43]Wait. So maybe let me go backwards.

[00:22:47]Nope. Won't let me go back or advance on there. Okay. Uh let's let's let's get some space art there with that one up there since it stuttered up there. The last flight of Discovery in the UD Varhazi.

[00:23:06]Uh wonderful facility. It's there to stay. It will not go anywhere. The final flight of Endeavor OV105, the replacement for Challenger, was also the last planned flight of the shuttle program. This was the last planned flight. Now, okay. 135 had been prepared as a rescue mission for 134.

[00:23:29]This unique patch, initially conceived by Gloria Gfords, the mother-in-law of mission commander Mark Kelly, I did not know that, draws its inspiration from an atom.

[00:23:43]Electrons can be seen orbiting the nucleus at the center of the patch, which also represents the birth of the universe in what we call the big bang.

[00:23:53]During the mission to the International Space Station, the crew delivered the Alpha magnetic spectrometer called AMS- O2, a revolutionary particle physics detector designed to analyze cosmic rays in space and seek out evidence of the phenomenon of antimatter, dark matter, and dark energy in a quest to discover more about the mysteries and origins of the universe.

[00:24:20]These new scientific capabilities of the International Space Station suggest that a new era of scientific discoveries on the horizon for space exploration and in our understanding of the universe. This is stated in the artwork by the shuttle in the ISS in orbit over a colorful limb of Earth. This flight lasted 16 days of which 12 were spent on the ISS. a very long mission. Um, four EVAs were carried out, space walks, conducting installations and maintenance work on a station. These were the final space walks of the space shuttle program. When 135 went up, there was no EVAs. that was with four astronauts and crammed in the in the the car in the mid deck was all the equipment they could possibly get in there to uh uh help sustain the international space station taking up bigger things that the soy use couldn't take up obviously when we had to rely on it. This launch date was May 16th, 2011, 15 years ago, Marty. Wow. It was the end of that era there. Uh, and NASA kind of had the money and everything together for 135 and it was sort of like we're going to launch it, okay? Try to stop us in a way. Uh, Michael Frink was on this mission and he is the astronaut that admits he had the medical incident to bring back the crew. uh uh 10 early up there at space station. So uh uh anyway, pen the the ultimate flight there of Endeavor and Endeavor is now perched like on the launch pad at the California Science Museum in Los Angeles and I am hoping to see that. That is on my bucket list, Marty. Uh, and we know enough people we could probably get a VIP coattail, ride the coattails of Terry White because he knows the space worker.

[00:26:25]So does several people around here. Uh, local space workers helping them with that install. So, uh, excellent. We got Alan Schmidt watching today. Allan, hope you have a good Memorial Day weekend.

[00:26:36]Cliff Watson down in Pomona, Australia.

[00:26:39]Marty Cliff's got he's coming to Shuttlefest. So, Cliffy, we're going to have you on Shuttle. How about that, Aussie? What do you think about that there? Azie the manatee. Um Doug Forest.

[00:26:52]Uh I'm not I don't know if you're coming or not, Doug, but of course uh if you do, we we're going to be featuring your artwork with Chris Calli and Ronnie Woods. Uh my daughter Jesse, I hope to see you here in about a month. Jim McDade at the Rocket Ranch in Huntsville. Oilia in France. Carlton Bailey is uh out there at his house.

[00:27:14]Robert Laws in Dundee, Scotland. He'll be at Shuttlefest. Bill Rawlings. Thank you, Bill, for joining today. Tom Selantano up in Connecticut. Dave Stangy up in Michigan chomping at the bit to get his wife Julie down here for their big uh wedding anniversary and enjoy a little shuttle fest. Um Gary Gerald, can't wait to see him. Dean Babcock mentioned this is his 43rd Indianapolis 500. Oh my gosh. I went to like 17. All right. Uh, and my grandpa Mel Marquette was in the first two in 1911 and 12. And Marty, kind of like Marquette is, he was the first per one to crash at an Indy500 on lap 10 when his right wheel just fell off. 44 races. I thought I'd be that guy, Dean, but uh it was quite an ordeal to get there some some years. uh bless your heart. He's in the I think you live in the Chicago area or up there. So, uh hope it's great weather for you and it's the greatest spectacle in racing. Is the greatest spectacle in sports ever. It is unbelievable to see 300,000 people, Marty, on one piece of property watching cars go around the track at 200 miles an hour is something else. So uh and we got Mostly Park Marion, Steve Johams, go Forza Ferrari and RG Jubilee and Mitch Rothman who was sitting here in Azy's chair yesterday at this time. Uh go check that out. Uh Mitch and Marty uh had a good board meeting. I did too. Uh we got things uh uh going to take time to to get a solid business plan that we need here to sustain what we do here and that is celebrate the birth of the American space age in its cradle Bard County, Florida. And we are just nine miles away from the launch pads.

[00:29:16]However, we're about I don't know how far away we are from Texas and and uh the uh Starship that's going to launch up here. So, yep. Starship's going up in uh a little after 6:00.

[00:29:30]Let me just tell you where we where we sign off here. Hope you enjoy me mashing up space shuttle history. And um let's get that flight of the 12th Starlink up there so you all don't have to look. It is an hour and 49 minutes away at 6:30.

[00:29:52]Now they pushed it back a little bit.

[00:29:54]The first launch from pad 2 at Starbase Texas. Uh this is a longer version of the Starship, noticeably a little bit longer, I think. U and it's got uh four ports uh where it can be fueled uh or are apparent. They're not going to do that. It's suborbital. Uh and I don't know how far they're going on it. So, um, if they're going all the way to, uh, Australia, Cliff, you might be able to see it thing come down. Uh, there is a, uh, the window closes at 8:00. So, they got 6:30 to 8. Planned trajectory is suborbital, 12th flight of Starship and Superheavy.

[00:30:39]This will be the first flight of version three. I don't see anything here that they're going to catch it either one.

[00:30:47]And they're going to carry 22 Starlink simulators similar in size to the next generation. It's a little PEZ dispenser they pit them. They they they set them out and of course test heat shield and so forth on that. So um uh 80,000 kil kilon newtons kil kilon newtons is the thrust. I don't know how to convert that. Uh but uh anyway, booster 19 its first flight and ship 39 it'll be its first and only flight. So good luck starship Marty comment or question.

[00:31:28]>> Uh statement. We're 102 miles from the launch pad.

[00:31:33]>> All right. We're 102 miles away. Okay.

[00:31:37]Shoot. That close. That's closer. All right. So, we're 1,000 miles away. We're 400 or 5,000 miles away from uh Robert Law. So, well, thank you all for watching today. Tomorrow's Friday. I'm going to try to rack up a little bit of maybe some more astronaut Hall of Fame pictures there. Uh clean up some of the news stories that uh I've been harvesting. Uh maybe we do a solar system uh trip around there and see what's going on with the unmanned explorers that America has. So thank you all for watching today. Marty, anything to clean up over there? Pretty >> good.

[00:32:14]>> All right. Thank you so much, Marty, for your faithfulness here and doing the show. Azie the space manatee, thank you for being here. And until tomorrow, I'm Mark Marquette saying go Starship and we will see you tomorrow to talk about it. bridge the space between us.

[00:32:32]Thank you so much.