The dream of having people live and work in space didn’t start with billionaire Jeff Bezos, or even with rocket pioneer Wernher von Braun. Instead, you’d have to look back at least as far as 1869 — a full century before humans walked on the moon.
That’s just one of the fun facts you’ll learn from the Museum of Flight’s new exhibition, “Home Beyond Earth,” which opens today.
Geoff Nunn, the museum’s adjunct curator for space history, said this exhibit is meant to provide fun as well as education in the subjects of science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM.
“One of our goals was to go beyond the STEM of it, and really look at the underlying cultural connection and human fascination with living and working in space,” Nunn said. “Ultimately, we want everyone who comes through this exhibit, whether or not they’re interested in science and engineering, to think about how the space community is changing.”
The 1869 version of the space station dream serves as an example. Back then, Edward Everett Hale wrote “The Brick Moon,” a serialized novella about an artificial satellite that was built from bricks. The Museum of Flight’s team adapted an illustration from the story to create a 3D-printed model of the masonry moon, complete with tiny figures and palm trees sticking up from the top of the globe.
Other displays trace the evolution of the space station concept through the 1950s, when Walt Disney turned von Braun’s vision of a rotating space station into a TV show … the 1960s, when “2001: A Space Odyssey” picked up on the idea … the 1970s, when the Soviets and the Americans put up their first space stations … the 1980s and ’90s, when Russia’s Mir space station helped bridge the Cold War divide … leading all the way up to the present-day era of the International Space Station.
The centerpiece of the exhibition is a 3D-printed model of the ISS — but not just any model. This one is hooked up to a stream of telemetry from the real-life space station. Computer-controlled mechanisms turn the model’s solar arrays and other components ever so slowly to mimic what’s happening in orbit.
“That is a Boeing creation,” Nunn said. “There’s a team at Boeing in Houston, and I ran into them at ISSRDC when it was here in Seattle and got to talking to them. I thought that the mimic idea was really, really cool.”
Engineering students from the University of Washington’s WOOF 3D club created the museum’s replica space station and hooked it up for the exhibition. Peder Nelson, the museum’s digital engagement manager, said there’s one component on the real ISS that isn’t on the ISS Mimic model. “We’re going to let the experts find that,” he said. “That’s the one piece that would get knocked out of the way by the solar arrays, the way the 3D print turned out.”
3D-printed plastic modules are spread across the table next to the ISS Mimic display, to give kids (and even retired astronauts) an opportunity to put together their own model space station.
Touchscreen monitors are scattered throughout the exhibition space in the museum’s Red Barn wing. The first one is programmed to let you pick your favorite space station, real or fictional. Other screens ask you to choose the kind of environment you’d like to live in and pick out the job you’d like to do.
A digital-token system keeps track of your space lifestyle choices. At the last interactive station, you can see which choices were the most popular among the exhibition’s virtual space station residents. (When I checked the stats, no one had signed up to become a journalist.)
Ariel Ekblaw, co-founder and CEO of the Aurelia Institute, was tickled to see how the exhibition turned out.
“It’s incredibly meaningful for us, because our mission at Aurelia is to democratize access to space, and show more people around the world that there is a life in space worth living for them,” said Ekblaw, who provided some of the flight hardware that’s on display.
The exhibition’s open-access perspective on living in space resonated with a trio of spacefliers who were given a sneak peek at “Home Beyond Earth.” Chris Sembroski — who rode a SpaceX Crew Dragon into orbit in 2021 and now works as an avionics testing engineer at Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture in Kent, Wash. — said the exhibition is designed for museumgoers who are “curious, but not space-curious for the most part.”
“It’s all about inspiring people to think about themselves in space,” he said. “Space is supposed to be open for all, and that’s what all these new space companies are working on creating.”
3D-printed materials are much in evidence in the exhibit space. One of the artifacts on display is a replica of the Refabricator, a device built by Bothell, Wash.-based Tethers Unlimited that tested techniques for recycling 3D-printer plastic on the International Space Station.
Retired NASA astronaut Dottie Metcalf-Lindenburger, who flew to the ISS on the shuttle Discovery in 2010 and now focuses on STEM advocacy and education, said the emphasis on 3D printing was fitting for an exhibit about homes beyond Earth. In the future, space station crews probably won’t need to have so much of their equipment shipped up from Earth. “You could make your own tools, and then recycle them and make something else,” she said.
“And then there’s the other piece, too. I was working with fifth-graders last week, and one kid was like, ‘I’m really into 3D printing, but I didn’t know there would be jobs [in space] for me in the future. And I was like, ‘Yes!’… It was really a cute moment,” Metcalf-Lindenburger said.
Soyeon Yi became the first South Korean citizen in space when she flew to the ISS for an 11-day stay in 2008. Now she’s an educator and business executive who’s based in the Seattle area, but she still yearns to return to orbit.
“I always want to go back if I have a chance, because whatever you’ve done before, you always have a small little thing you want to do,” she explained. “Sometimes I doubt myself: Did I really go there? Because the girl who had an interview is the younger me. It’s not myself anymore … It’s already 15 years.”
Yi probably won’t have 15 more years to return to the ISS. If NASA follows through on its long-range plan, the space station will be deorbited by 2031. But NASA’s plan also calls for commercial space stations to take the place of the ISS. The final gallery in the “Home Beyond Earth” exhibition shows off the concepts for future orbital outposts that are being developed by commercial ventures including Axiom Space and Orbital Reef.
Because Yi’s résumé combines spaceflight and business development, I had to ask whether she’s been contacted by any of those ventures. “Not yet,” she said. “But if I can have a chance, I would love to work with that.”
“Home Beyond Earth” is a temporary exhibit housed in the Museum of Flight’s William E. Boeing Red Barn. The exhibit is free with museum membership, and included with general admission. Check out the Museum of Flight’s website for today’s schedule of opening-day events.
Here’s a bonus selection of pictures from the exhibition:
