On August 21, 2017 — two weeks before the Frazier Museum adopted the brand “Where the World Meets Kentucky” — the world met Kentucky at Orchardale Farm.

The occasion was the Great American Eclipse, a total solar eclipse that was visible in a band extending across the contiguous United States, from the Pacific to the Atlantic coast. Although millions of people residing in this “Path of Totality” could witness the phenomenon from home, 100,000 tourists from 46 states and 20 countries instead traveled to southwest Kentucky. The goal was to be at or near the point of greatest eclipse, which happened to be at Orchardale Farm — a corn-, beans-, wheat-, and hay-harvesting operation situated between Cerulean and Hopkinsville.

Two of the tourists who made the pilgrimage to the Path of Totality were my friend Margaret and me. That morning, we hopped in her car, drove to Mineral Mound State Park in Lyon County, and encamped on a fishing pier jutting into Lake Barkley. That’s where we, and many other folks on and around the pier, the boat ramp, and the lake, witnessed the historic total solar eclipse.

Half of what I recall from the 2 minutes and 40 seconds of totality is the way people reacted: some gasped, one screamed “Oh my God!,” then most cheered and applauded or honked their car horns. But the other half of my memory pertains to nature: the sky got dark, the air got cool, and the confused crickets started chirping. I bobbed in the lake, wondering what the fish and snakes made of the sudden “nightfall.”

Looking back, four years later, I can’t separate that celestial event from the terrestrial setting in which we watched it. Kentucky — the land blessed with salt licks, tupelo swamps, bluegrass meadows, sandstone arches, limestone caves, and other bounties of nature — got a front row seat to a cosmic spectacle! That’s something rare, special, and worth celebrating.

In today’s issue of Virtual Frazier Magazine, we explore this special relationship between Kentucky and outer space.

First, Mick Sullivan interviews Paintsville-native astrophysicist Joe Burchett on the Hubble Space Telescope, named for Louisville luminary Edwin Hubble. Amanda Briede shares an Apollo 12 commemorative glass in the museum’s collection, Michael Phillips highlights Waggener High School alum and NASA Mission Engineer Tracy Drain, and Grace M. James Academy student Abigail Seow pays tribute to an astronaut who inspires her.

Pam Platt revisits a timeless debate (why not space and earth?), Rachel Platt reflects on her time covering NASA’s Sally Ride and Guion Bluford for Florida television, and Brian West sheds light on some astronomy-related historical sites and stargazing resources in Kentuckiana. Plus, Rich Boling traces a student’s 1985 science competition idea — incubating chicken embryos in space — to a Kentucky Fried Chicken internship and, eventually, the birth of a space research equipment firm.

I’ll leave you with a quote that, misattributed to Daniel Boone, has been circulating since at least 1818:

“Heaven is a Kentucky of a place.”

Simon Meiners
Communications & Research Specialist
Frazier History Museum

This Week in the Museum

Paintsville-native Astrophysicist Joe Burchett on the Hubble Space Telescope

Like country musicians Tyler Childers, Chris Stapleton, and Loretta Lynn, 1944 Miss America Venus Ramey, and New York School of Ballet founder Richard Scott Thomas, Dr. Joe Burchett hails from Johnson County, Kentucky. Today, he is Assistant Professor at New Mexico State University specializing in extragalactic astrophysics.

Like revolutionary astronomer Edwin Hubble, Joe spent a fair amount of time here in Louisville, which is how I first met him. We spent a few minutes talking about Edwin Hubble’s legacy and time in the area, as well as Joe’s own research using the eponymous Hubble Space Telescope. Joe has done some fascinating work, and I think you’ll enjoy his insights into what goes on beyond our planet.

Mick Sullivan
Curator of Guest Experience

Curator’s Corner: Apollo 12 Glass and Story Musgrave

You may be surprised to know that we do have one space-related object in our collection: an Apollo 12 commemorative glass. This glass was produced by Libbey to celebrate the United States’ second landing on the moon. The Apollo 12 was launched from the Kennedy Space Center on November 14, 1969 and landed a craft on the moon on November 19. Commander Charles “Pete” Conrad and Lunar Module Pilot Alan L. Bean completed work on the moon while Command Module Pilot Richard F. Gordon remained in lunar orbit. Because all three of these crewmembers were U.S. Navy commanders, the mission’s insignia features a clipper ship. The Apollo 12 successfully returned to Earth on November 24. The command module is now on display at the Virginia Air and Space Center in Hampton, Virginia.

We also have one Kentucky astronaut featured in the Hall of Unsung Kentuckians in our exhibition Cool Kentucky: Story Musgrave, who was born in Stockbridge, Massachusetts but considers Lexington, Kentucky to be his hometown. After being injured in a car accident, Musgrave dropped out of high school his senior year and joined the Marines, where he completed his GED. He went on to earn six academic degrees: a B.S. in mathematics and statistics from Syracuse University, an M.B.A. in operations analysis and computer programming from the University of California, a B.A. in chemistry from Marietta College, an M.D. degree from Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, an M.S. in physiology and biophysics from the University of Kentucky, and an M.A. in literature from the University of Houston-Clear Lake. In 1967, Musgrave was selected by NASA to be a scientist-astronaut. He is the second astronaut to fly on six spaceflights and is the only astronaut to have flown aboard all five Space Shuttles. His time spent in space is a total of 1,281 hours, 59 minutes, and 22 seconds, including nearly 27 hours of work outside of the space craft.

Amanda Briede
Curator

Kentucky to the World: Tracy Drain, Taking a Piece of Kentucky to NASA

Did you know that a recent Pew Research Center study found that only 5 percent of employed engineers in the U.S. are African American and additionally, only 14 percent of those engineers are women?

One Kentuckian has devoted her life to science after being inspired as a student right here in Kentucky. Now a Lead Flight System Engineer for the Europa Clipper Mission at NASA, Tracy Drain has fearlessly maintained the significance of scientific progress by breaking down barriers.

Drain was born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky. As a child, her mother, her teachers, and many others encouraged her to “pay attention to the world around [her].” This attention to both natural phenomena and technological marvels would ultimately pave the way for Drain to pursue excellence in the sciences.

In an interview she gave with NASA, she remembers her first time developing an interest in space and space exploration, marveling at how scientists were able to understand how the solar system took shape. She remembered “it was formed from a giant cloud of gas and dust spewed out by supernovas and it all came together under gravity and made the sun and all the planets — I thought it was bananas that scientists could figure all that out based on what they can see today.”

This prevailing interest would help her stay focused as she progressed as a student. After graduating from Waggener High School in 1993, Drain would move into the B.S. in Mechanical Engineering program at the University of Kentucky. During her time at UK, she interned at the NASA Langley Research Center in Virginia.

After graduating with her master’s in mechanical engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2000, she was immediately hired by the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory to join the team working on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). After the orbiter’s successful launch in 2005, Drain was promoted to lead systems engineer.

She went on to work on the Kepler project, hunting for Earth-like planets, and the Juno orbiter mission, which began studying the gravity and magnetic fields of Jupiter when it successfully reached the planet in 2016.

She has been with NASA for over 17 years now and is currently the Technical Group Supervisor for the Flight Systems Engineering group and working on the Psyche mission, studying the largest known metal asteroid in our solar system with a projected launch set for 2022.

As she’s soared in the world of astrophysics and aeronautical engineering, she has remained unwavering in her commitment to uplifting the next generation of scientists through academic discovery. Today, in addition to her continued work as a leading Flight Systems Engineer, Tracy Drain has dedicated a significant portion of her energy to helping children and students develop a stronger scientific literacy.

Visit the Kentucky to the World installation in the Frazier Museum’s Cool Kentucky exhibition to learn more about the amazing Tracy Drain.

Michael Phillips
Native Content Writer and Researcher, Kentucky to the World
Guest Contributor

History All Around Us

Grace M. James Academy’s Abigail Seow on NASA Mission Specialist Mae Jemison

Seeing is believing, and thanks to women like Tracy Drain and Mae Jemison, more young women see themselves in the space program. I reached out to Principal Ronda Cosby at Grace M. James Academy of Excellence, which focuses on an Afrocentric STEAM curriculum, and asked if they had any students interested in space. They sure did. Meet Abigail. — Rachel Platt, Director of Community Engagement

My name is Abigail Seow and I am in the seventh grade at the Grace M. James Academy of Excellence.

I have an interest in most things related to space. I figure if I go to space, I would get to see and experience some of those things up close. Also, I think it’s cool how things in space work — like how the earth rotates around the sun.

One of my inspirations for wanting to go to space is Mae Jemison. One of the reasons she inspires me is she was the first African American woman astronaut. I first learned about her when my dad wanted me to write a report on a woman from history. So, one day, I chose her from a book I was reading called 101 Awesome Women Who Changed Our World. She also helped me realize that even though you have fears, that shouldn’t stop you from what you want to do. Her biggest fear was being afraid of heights, and she overcame that fear to go to space.

I chose GMJ because I wanted to try something new and different. I had not even heard about Grace James until our principal, Mrs. Cosby, came to my elementary school and told us about it. Something she said that day really spoke to me. She talked about no homework and no uniforms but more importantly, she talked about the “CROWN” values, which are collaboration, resilience, originality, willingness, and narrative.

Abigail Seow
Student, Grace M. James Academy of Excellence
Guest Contributor

Why Not Space and Earth?

I simply cannot join the chorus of critics about the latest leaps to space aboard Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origins crafts, which took them and several passengers to the edge of space.

Like many of my friends, I am suspicious of billionaires who want to plant their flag, and their footprint, in this (for too-long) latest frontier; wish we were farther along in exploring it.

But having lived on the Space Coast for a long time, a while back, and having read many stories about the everyday-life “spinoffs” of space technology, I was struck the other day by a newer friend’s comment that the renewed — and faux — argument between space and Earth is about the technology.

My gosh, it always has been.

We have no idea right now how the space endeavors of Branson, Bezos, and Elon Musk may impact our lives in the years ahead. And I mean that in a positive way.

I’ll never forget a reporter turning in a story in the 1990s about how some of the best lifesaving techniques in neonatal units of the day were derived from moon mission advances 30 years before.

I lived on the beach when Apollo 11 went up in July 1969. I was too young then to know about this, but protesters, some of them household names, showed up at the Apollo 11 pre-launch activities. They were there, and good for them, to stress how this money ought to be spent on Earthbound issues regarding poverty rather than pie-in-the-sky dreams.

A NASA executive named Thomas Paine met with Ralph Abernathy, one of the protesters, to discuss how this might happen. According to The History Channel, after their meeting Abernathy said, “On the eve of man’s noblest venture, I am profoundly moved by the nation’s achievements in space and the heroism of the three men embarking for the moon,” he said. But, he added, “What we can do for space and exploration we demand that we do for starving people.”

That is still the mission for all of us, and absolutely should be for the three billionaires who are making their way into space right now. There is no reason to shortchange people on Earth for off-Earth endeavors.

In the end, I really think there is no conflict between the two, and I think it is a false choice that is being presented — space or Earth. How about space AND Earth?

All Earthlings already are connected to space in ways seen and unseen, known and unknown. Kentucky is reminded of this with NASA astronauts who come from the Bluegrass State or consider it their home state — Randolph Bresnik, Story Musgrave, Terrence Wilcutt — as well as high-quality, postsecondary educational programs, such as those associated with the Ronald G. Eaglin Space Science Center at Morehead State University. And Indiana? After the military academies, Purdue University of West Lafayette has produced more astronauts than any other U.S. university.

The great poet/songwriter/performer Gil Scott-Heron had one of the most powerful and pointed songs during the age of Apollo about the seeming conflict between Earth’s needs and space’s wants. But NASA has become much more representative of the nation’s population since the time of all white men, all the time ... and its spinoffs have affected so many aspects of life for all of us — baby formula, cochlear implants, blood pumps, solar panels, and on and on.

I don’t think that bonanza of spinoffs will change, even though we’re in a new age of increasingly privatized discovery regarding space.

As Ralph Abernathy and fellow protesters did 50 years ago, let’s always, always, remind these established and new explorers of our shared humanity, and their responsibility to it and to us. They are, and have, nothing without us. We’re all passengers, and products, of planet Earth.

Pam Platt
Former Editorial Director, Courier Journal
Guest Contributor

The Kids of Apollo: Covering Sally Ride and Guion Bluford

So I belong to this Facebook Group, The Kids of Apollo. The memories and photos shared on that page take me back to a place in time, Patrick Air Force Base in the 1960s, where I spent much of my childhood.

Passing by the Rocket Garden was a daily reminder on A1A that exploration and other worlds were part of our world. Our father was a pilot, stationed at Patrick AFB, and a big part of his job was flying planes equipped with special telemetry that would provide crucial communications for astronauts during their missions. And yes, I did have that Snoopy poster on my wall as a child.

This commemoration certificate for my dad’s work on Apollo 11 still hangs in my mom’s house. My father is no longer with us, but there are countless reminders of his and our glory days, furthering the space program.

So it shouldn’t come as any surprise that the kids of Apollo, meaning two of the Platt sisters, would end up covering the space program. My sister Pam wrote about it for years with Florida Today, meeting pioneers like Alan Shepard, and profiling John Glenn for his shuttle mission in 1998.

She continued to write about space at the Courier Journal, and she still follows every launch like she still lives at Patrick. Heck, she even wrote about the space race for this edition of Virtual Frazier Magazine.

As for me, my first TV job was at WMOD, covering Melbourne and Orlando, Florida. The biggest perk of that job was covering several shuttle launches.

Take a really close look at this picture on the left that I took a lifetime ago (1983) and you will see Sally Ride, who had just flown into the Kennedy Space Center. She was getting ready for her historic mission on the Space Shuttle Challenger, making her the first American woman in space. My photographer and I would have a front row seat in the press area to that historic launch days later on June 18, 1983. You couldn’t help shed tears of pride for what that moment meant. And the same would hold true when I got to cover another historic launch later that year.

Guion Bluford would become the first African American in space, in what would be the first night launch of the shuttle program, and I was privileged to be there again.

A lightning show that night made the experience even more mystical.

All these years later, I watch launches on TV or my phone, my new front row seat to history living in Kentucky.

I’m still watching, and shedding tears for what it means to future generations, and just for the possibilities.

It never gets old for the kids of Apollo.

Rachel Platt
Director of Community Engagement

Kentuckiana Stargazing: Gus Grissom Sites and LAS Telescope Loan Program

As Kentuckiana finds itself in the grips of heatwave, in which the dewpoint and humidity have reached levels suited more to the Tropics than the Bluegrass, it seems worthwhile to remind readers that fall is not too far away, and with it will come earlier sunsets, fall sports, and of course cooler weather.

Fall will be a great time to step outside in the early evening and night hours and look towards the stars. And in Kentuckiana, there are a plethora of opportunities to enjoy stargazing and learn more about the history of American space exploration, safely and comfortably.

In Mitchell, Indiana, there is the boyhood home of Lt Colonel Virgil “Gus” Grissom (1926 – 1967). Grissom was a USTAF test pilot and one of the Mercury 7, NASA’s original crew of astronauts — the select few who were deemed to have “The Right Stuff” to be the first Americans in space.

The home was renovated and turned into a museum, with many rooms containing furnishings and appliances dating back to the time of the 1930s and ‘40s, the time of Grissom’s childhood.  The home is open to the public, now through October, on Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Visitors to Mitchell can also learn more about Grissom’s career with NASA, a few miles away from his boyhood home, at Spring Mill State Park. There, visitors can get an up-close view of the Gemini 3 space capsule at the Virgil I. “Gus” Grissom Memorial Museum. The capsule — which Grissom named “Molly Brown” — is the vehicle in which Grissom, along with fellow astronaut John Young, became one the first Americans ever to complete a crewed, maneuvered sub-orbital flight.

If a day trip to Mitchell is not an option, then there is another option worth considering for a trip to the stars. The Louisville Astronomical Society has partnered with the Louisville Free Public Library by running the Library Telescope Program. The program gives adult library members (ages 18 and up) in Kentuckiana the chance to check out high grade tabletop telescopes, allowing members the chance to stargaze from the comfort of their own homes.

And with telescopes available to loan in Louisville and Southern Indiana, LFPL members across the area can take full advantage of the program — and even receive instruction and mentoring from LAS members.

Those are just three ways for readers go out and see the stars for themselves this fall.

Brian West
Teaching Artist

In 1930, Indiana native and entrepreneur Harland Sanders established his first restaurant in Kentucky, marking the start of what would become the global restaurant chain Kentucky Fried Chicken. Fifty-five years later, Indiana native and incoming college freshman John Vellinger started an internship at the KFC headquarters in Louisville. At the behest of NASA, KFC had set out to turn the student’s winning science competition idea — incubating chicken embryos in outer space — into a reality. The result was the birth of a space shuttle research equipment company called Techshot. For more on that Kentuckiana success story, here’s Techshot Vice President Rich Boling. — Simon Meiners, Communications & Research Specialist

Mark Deuser and John Vellinger forgot about the cold. At 11:39 a.m., it was 36 degrees Fahrenheit at the Banana Creek launch viewing site at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and they were transfixed by what was happening in the clear blue sky over the Atlantic Ocean. Though they’d never seen a space shuttle launch in person before, they immediately knew that something about this one, the 25th in the history of the program, didn’t look right. It was January 28, 1986, and space shuttle Challenger had just launched on its final mission.

Eight months earlier, Vellinger, a native of Lafayette, Indiana and a mechanical engineering freshman at Purdue University, began his internship at KFC headquarters on Gardiner Lane in Louisville. After being approached by NASA, KFC had agreed to help Vellinger turn his winning science competition idea into a real space shuttle research device. His idea focused on incubating 32 chicken embryos in space to see if they would develop normally without gravity. And perhaps because “…nobody knows chicken like KFC,” the project seemed like a good fit for the company.

Working with a team of KFC engineers led by Deuser, Vellinger built America’s first space egg incubator. The project was called Chix in Space (in a nod to a recurring Muppets sketch at the time called Pigs in Space.) The Chix project could help the space agency better understand the feasibility of eventually having human families living and working in space.

With the incubator finished by the fall of 1985, Vellinger and Deuser took it — complete with an image of Colonel Sanders on the front — to the NASA Johnson Space Flight Center in Houston to train the crew of mission STS-51L, who would operate the device aboard space shuttle Challenger on a six-day mission. As a student experiment, the pair worked especially closely with teacher and crew member Christa McAuliffe and her back-up, fellow teacher Barbara Morgan (who was prepared to step in and replace McAuliffe on the crew if illness or some other reason necessitated).

And so it was McAuliffe and her six crewmates that Vellinger and Deuser were thinking of when the magnitude of the tragedy unfolding before them became clear in that moment frozen in time, on that cold January morning. Even as NASA officials hurried them to waiting buses, the pair moved haltingly, continuing to stop and look up, hoping make some sense of they were seeing.

Two years later, with the world still mourning the loss of the crew, and the space shuttle program still grounded, NASA encouraged Vellinger and Deuser to prepare a new incubator for mission STS-29. Back at Gardiner Lane, they built a new flight unit and two back-up devices, all again featuring the Colonel on the front. On March 13, 1989, space shuttle Discovery successfully rocketed into space to begin a nearly five-day mission. It carried on its middeck 32 growing chicken embryos, carefully maintained by the Chix in Space device.

Following the success of the mission, Vellinger and Deuser began receiving compliments and fielding technical questions about their payload from people they considered real rocket scientists. This happened enough that they decided to start a company building space research devices. Vellinger graduated from Purdue, Deuser quit KFC, and the company that would become known as Techshot Inc., was born.

Besides space shuttles, Techshot devices have now also flown aboard parabolic-flight aircraft, sub-orbital rockets, commercial cargo spacecraft from SpaceX and Northrop Grumman, and the International Space Station (ISS).

The company has agreements with NASA and the ISS U.S. National Laboratory that provide it with a guaranteed allotment of launch services and in-space astronaut time to help with experiments. Crew training is now via Techshot-produced and -uploaded videos. Its headquarters in Greenville, Indiana features a Payload Operations Control Center where its scientists and engineers control its in-space devices and maintain a direct video and audio link to the ISS to discuss procedures in real time with the astronauts.

With a few exceptions, Techshot serves as a provider of high-tech “picks and shovels”, i.e., complex research devices that its customers then use to make new discoveries in the life and physical sciences in space. Most of this research is studying ways to improve life on Earth, rather than helping NASA explore the universe.

One of the four devices Techshot has on board the ISS today is its Bone Densitometer, an X-ray machine for mice. Companies such as Novartis and Eli Lilly, and universities such as UCLA, have used it to test new treatments for bone loss and muscle-wasting diseases — ailments experienced by older patients in particular. Long duration spaceflight seems to mimic aging, although at an accelerated pace, which helps scientists more quickly complete their research.

Other Techshot devices are used in research with squid, stem cells, fruit flies, protein crystals, cement, metals, plants, and many, many other sample types and fields of study. The company also manages the science taking place in NASA-owned space furnaces and NASA’s Advanced Plant Habitat aboard the station (recently noted for growing bumper crops of radishes and peppers in space).

Besides research, Techshot is developing four in-space manufacturing projects. Its Pharmaceutical In-space Laboratory (PIL) will be used to make crystalline forms of drugs in space, which can increase delivery options for some patients on Earth. Biopharma company Merck is its key PIL collaborator.

FabLab is a large 3D printer for in-space manufacture of high-strength aerospace grade metal parts and electronics. This machine will be used first aboard the ISS, then in deep-space NASA missions.

The Techshot Cell Factory will make billions of human cells in space for cell therapies and for bioinks used in the company’s 3D BioFabrication Facility or BFF. Already tested in space, the BFF is part of a biomanufacturing system that Techshot hopes will enable the in-space manufacture of human organs and tissues for use by patients on Earth. Thick tissue printed on Earth collapses under gravity. After printing in BFF aboard the station, Techshot matures and conditions the assembled cells in space over several weeks in a special bioreactor that toughens them up for re-entry and eventually for transplantation.

NASA and Congress have created the conditions that are helping businesses large and small take over much of the work the agency has traditionally conducted in space. This is enabling NASA to focus on the Artemis program, which will transport humans farther into space than ever before (Techshot is part of a team working on new gloves for astronauts working on the surface of the moon). Recent suborbital launch missions by Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin, owned by Jeff Bezos, are about far more than joy rides for billionaires. These launch systems already have conducted several life and physical science research missions (Sirisha Bandla, a woman on the flight with Branson, can be seen conducting an experiment).

With nearly a dozen of its own research and manufacturing devices, costing more than $3 million to nearly $20 million to build and spaceflight certify, Techshot is one of the leading companies operating inside the ISS National Lab. While still headquartered in Greenville, approximately 20 minutes from downtown Louisville, offices and a lab have also been added at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. In 2017, Vellinger took over as CEO from Deuser, who now is semi-retired.

Born in Louisville, and raised in Greenville, Techshot is a true Kentuckiana success story — one that is still being written, about a future it is helping to create.

Rich Boling
Vice President, Techshot
Guest Contributor

50 Best Space Movies of All Time

The sight of actor Sam Shepard chewing Beemans gum portraying test pilot Chuck Yeager ranks up there for me in The Right Stuff. Like Yeager, Shepard exuded that “something extra” needed to test the limits of earth. So I was quick to look at this list of the best space movies of all time to see where it landed. See if you agree with the rankings.

Rachel Platt
Director of Community Engagement

Staff Pick

Reach: A Space Podcast for Kids

I’m a huge fan of great podcasts made for young ears and one of the best is a space-centered show that debuted last year called Reach: A Space Podcast for Kids. The show addresses big and small questions kids (and adults) might have about outer space. Familiar voices like Jack McBrayer, Rachel Dratch, and Tawny Newsome help the hosts share digestible and entertaining intergalactic information grounded in the expertise of NASA scientists, astronomers, educators, and now, real live crew members of the International Space Station.

On September 1, Reach will broadcast live on NASA TV with NASA Astronauts Megan McArthur and Mark Vande Hei as they connect from the International Space Station. You can find the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and other podcatchers. You can watch the September 1 stream here on NASA TV (exact time TBA).

Mick Sullivan
Curator of Guest Experience