Episode 668- Margaret Weitekamp Chair, Space History Department National Air & Space Museum

0:09 David, I don't hear anything, and. They knows Kane and again has gone insane. Logan six Corporal thinks that Jim and Doney to fixed Pripple. NPC Ted everily cannot see Bumblebee Kane, I'm the doctor, wrankling online Old Bob SAand world stories that will twist and turn bound Simitar death of Tasha, Yak Flash Gordon, but progs don't thro Prison Clone Wars, James Holden, Tweaky, Junk. Nigins, Yankee talk about the series.

0:52 You can join us, get up, phone down about the series. Okay, Treky's and Trekkers, Welcome to the podcast. It is Thursday, January fifteenth, twenty twenty six. Welcome to episode six hundred and sixty seven. Happy start for the Academy Day, everybody.

1:40 It's a day that we live for. As Trekky's new star Trek I hope you guys want things to watch it and enjoy it. We'll be talking about it next week on the podcast. I'm your most alcohol excellent host, Uncle Jim. Welcome to the show. I'm going to go around and introduce my awesome Treks. First, We're going to start off with Paul Paul's out in Portland. They doing tonight, Paul, I'm. Doing well, my friend. It's kind of a double dip, double dose of crazy Thursday. Today, we have a brand new Star Trek show airing that none of us have seen you, at least I haven't seen it. That we're all going to race to watch later on tonight. And we have with us a illuminary of the scientific science fiction confluence who is inspiring to share her wisdom with us tonight. So it's it's quite an exciting night here at truck Dogging. I'm a little amped, if you don't mind my parlance.

2:31 It definitely is. And we also have as well. I'm doing fantastic Jim. Like Paul, I'm kind of. Ridiculously excited about having Margaret here. And then also on top of that, I'm wearing a new Voyager T shirt that says there's coffee in that nebula, which just kind of gets me going anyway, right, because coffee really is the spice of life. Good to the last dream, it's right, yep. And let's stick with the Portland theme and say hello to David, our engineer. How you doing, David, I'm pretty good. It's pretty pretty been a really warm months months for some reason, Partitionmber. I don't know why I'm wearing us Twitter, but you know, but yeah, I'm excited.

3:22 To be here. Excellent and not from Portland but from Las Vegas. We have childs with us tonight. How you doing, Charles, I'm doing good. We're getting that same warm spell. I can't wait discuss my discuss some of my sci fi events back in twenty sixteen. That long ago, that long ago, that pre days truck Talking, doesn't it. I think it pre days my time with trek Talking. Yeah, it is on the. Line, Yeah, right on the line, and definitely not last and definitely not least. We want to say hello and welcome v She's out in Virginia, all right.

4:09 I am great, And I'm wearing my strange New World's tunic because of course that's where they're in the. Enterprise. So I thought that would be appropriate for tonight. I like it. I like it. And before we get too far, I just want to let you guys know that on the twenty ninth, we're going to be joined by check lower Deck, so you guys will want to definitely tune in for that. It's going to be again. As you know we're going to show. You don't want to miss that. And as I said start of the show, we have a very special guest with us tonight, we have Margaret White Camp with us. She's the chair of the Space History Department of the National Air and Space Science Museum. I've been there, It's awesome. Check it out.

5:02 She curates the museum's Social and Cultural History of Spaceflight collection, more than five thousand artifacts that include space memorabilia and space science fiction objects. These everyday mementos of the space age, which include toys and games, medals and awards, buttons and pins, as well as comics and trading cards. Complete the story about spaceflight is being told at the museum's collection of space Hardware and Technologies. She's also the author of Space Craze America's Enduring Fascination with Real and Imagine Splaceflight, which won the twenty twenty four Gardener Lasser Aerospace History Literature Award from the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, as well as Right Stuff, Wrong Sex America's Firth Women in Space. So, without any further ado, welcome to the show. Margaret. Thank you so much.

5:55 I'm delighted to be here, and we're. Glad that you took some time out of your busy schedule to chat with us. So I just wanted to start up. I'm asking you. Were you always a Star Treks fan. I grew up as a Star Wars kid in the nineteen eighties, and really, I would say, found Star Trek as a young adult and really became a big fan and probably the next gen era. And then I would say went back and found my way to the original series and have been watching all the way through from then. When I was in graduate school, we could not get Star Trek Voyager or a local cable provider didn't have that.

6:43 And I had a classmate whose sister lived in Florida and they could get it, and I was on her list of people, and she would get in the mail a VHS cassette that had the and then you had to pass it around. You could watch it, and you would pass it to the next person. And I remember getting a phone call or an email at some point saying like, Hey, you know there are people behind you on this list who maybe you can see the next episode. Paper do like as soon as I can. So I think that's really where, you know, my journey into the kind of Trek fandom has come, and it's been a great thing to get to study.

7:26 And have fun with. Now, are you looking forward to start through Academy tonight? Very much? So. I think it sounds like, you know, as someone who taught college for a few years before I came to the National Air and Space Museum and got a chance to be switched gears and became a museum curator, I'm a little interested to see what they do with that kind of a dynamic of teachers and students and thinking about how that fits into a Trek universe. I agree completely. I'm really looking forward to seeing what they do with it. So I check as best when it's different and outside the box, and I think that's exactly what Starfleet Academy is going to be, So I right there with that. I'm really excited. So what's your favorite Star Trek series of the whole sixty years?

8:17 Series wise? I've got to say I've got a little soft spot for Voyager. I really enjoyed Jane Way in the lead as someone who was studying at the time to be a women's historian and ended up writing about women pilots who took astronaut fitness testing, and therefore kind of coming back into the space world and thinking I had not thought that my personal nerdy fandom of Star Wars and Star Trek would turn out at some point to be something I would do with my job. But I really enjoyed Voyager for that vision of men and women working together, but also of a woman in the lead. And because it just had that little extra fun of it was a little hard to get and so I had to wait for my tape to show up to get to see the episodes, and so it meant that you had to work at it a little.

9:11 I hear that completely. Now. I wanted to talk a little bit about your Space Craze book, if you don't mind. So I had a chance to read it, and I was interested, and you mentioned in there about Silent Running, and I remember seeing that there's the cover for the book, so you guys can run out and buy it immediately, run, don't walk to Amazon, and get that book on the way in the mail. It's an interesting read. Silent Running. I remember seeing that at the drive in the theater with my parents before book, before Logan's Run, before Starwards before Star Trek. It was really, I think the first science fiction movie I remember seeing at the theater, and you mentioned it in your book, which I thought was interesting.

9:54 Can you tell us a little bit about that. I mentioned it in the book because part of what Space Crazed does. This really looks at how Americans have been fascinated with spaceflight, from Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon starting in the late twenties through to now a new series dropping just this very evening, and in the nineteen seventies, there's a moment when science fiction goes from being quite so shiny and eager and hopeful as it was in say, you know, the melodramas of the nineteen fifties, or from Star Trek, which had this, you know, Gene Roddenberry's optimism about what humanity could do, and then there's this moment in the seventies where it hits some friction and so Silent Running is a great depiction of Bruce Dern really taking a bit of a turn. He's been isolated on this orbiting space station, in part because he seems to have made himself the only person left alive on it, and he's on this giant space station that is attempting to it has differed diferent domes that are attempting to preserve Earth ecosystems that have been destroyed on Earth. So that vision of humanity not being great at taking care of our own planet and then moving that into space really is a very different vision of space science fiction than what you had gotten, say in the you know,

11:26 kitty shows of the nineteen fifties, or even something like Star Trek, which really cut brand new ground in the nineteen sixties, but in a very optimistic vein. And I really liked the name of the three robots that he had with him on the station too, and Louie. Yes, and this you know, interesting vision of you know, working with robots. We often have robots or some sort of robotic assistant as a part of imagined spaceflight. And I read in the book that you have a lot of memorabilia and model not just not just from Star Trek for us, some other famous sci fi What's what are some of your favorite exhibits or props that you have at the museum.

12:14 We have a wonderful collection of toy rayguns that go back to the very first Buck Rogers reygun created in nineteen thirty four, and then there was one created in nineteen thirty five, which is the Willmadeering Gun. So it's a smaller one for a girl. But I love the way that that, you know, kind of evokes the Western roots of so many science fiction shows. You know, they're really especially in that moment, is a lot of crossover. But we see that in you know, Our Space, the Final Frontier. You know, we use that kind of Western language a lot of times in science fiction. So I like those things a lot. And then I wrote a bit in the book. It's both about science fiction objects and memorabilia of real spaceflight and really about the interplay between those sets of ideas about how spaceflight has been imagined and then how it gets executed and remembered.

13:14 And so. Also told the story of a cabbage patch kid from the early nineteen eighties from the Young Astronaut program, you could get a Young Astronaut themed cabbage patch kid, And I tell the story in the book that I spent a couple of years trying to track down there was a cabbage patch kid young astronaut given to Ronald Reagan in a little public affairs ceremony on the South lawn of the White House, and that seemed like the one that should be at the Smithsonian, that should be on display. And in the end it took me a couple of years to track down the fact that they put it in a Toys for Talks drive to keep it at the regular library and not keep it at the White House.

14:03 Somewhere some kid that got a young cabbage backed kid got the one that was hinted trumal rating at the White House. So, uh so it is lost to history, as we would say, But we have a couple of examples of that young astronaut cabbage patch now in the collection, but not the one, not the one. So I also want to ask you about our imitating life imitating life, you know, like our first foot phones were very reminiscent of the communicator from Star Track. So what do you find. Do you find that art imitates life or life imitates art or are they both interchangeable.

14:50 Adam Savage is fond of saying it's a virtuous cycle, right, that it goes back and forth, the imitation and the people who are building the real things are interested in how it's been imagined. That the people who are imagining are looking very closely at what's real to try to make the imagination plausible. So yeah, we know that the very first that Motorola flip phone, they were interested in that motion and form of the flip phone of the communicator from Star Trek very clearly. You can, I think, look at like iPads and the ways that you know that was being imagined in next generation, or even just the the number of kind of flat screens touchable screens that you can now you know, I'm talking to you through a computer that now has a touch screen on it, so I can move things around if I need to.

15:42 And I think that when you talk to folks who are off working in those kinds of tech fields, very often they are fans of Star Trek or space science fiction. Generally they like that imagined vision of where we might be as a space faring species. And then back and forth. The people who are doing the creative stuff are often big fans of what's going on at NASA, of the Apollo program, of watch following and knowing astronauts getting ready for the Artemis launch back to the Moon in February. So I do think there is that virtuous cycle there where they are influencing each other. And in many ways, that's part of what I was trying to tease out in Space Craze is in these different moments dealing with both memorabilia of the actual space program and space science fiction objects. What stories are both? Are those objects telling us about the times in which they were built and used and played with?

16:41 Excellent, and I wanted to talk. I wanted to ask you a little bit about your second book right time on sex. I haven't had a chance to read that one, but can you tell us a little bit about that as well, because I think that's an interesting story. It is this is really where my career started, so this is right stuff, wrong sex, And I had the benefit of you can't copyright a title, so I got to grab a little bit from Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff and really look at this is the history of a group of women pilots who took astronaut fitness testing at the very beginning of the space age, so before any human being had gone into space, there were lots of questions in the scientific community about whether women might be better at it. On the average, smaller require less food, less water, less oxygen, fewer heart attacks, better cardiopulmonary health, and so they got this group of women pilots, including Jerry Cobb who's shown here on the cover, and invited them out to Randy Lovelace's facility, the Lovelace Foundation in the Southwest. And if you've seen the film Kaufman's nineteen eighty three film The Right Stuff, you've seen that depiction of the male military pilots going and going through all of the physical tests. Well, they put these women through the same physical test to see how they would do.

18:01 It wasn't an official NASA project. It never actually went anywhere, except that they did end up doing House subcommittee hearings in the summer of nineteen sixty two investigating whether NASA was discriminating on the basis of sex. And it really ends in some ways with Valentina Cherishkova becoming the first woman in space as a Soviet cosmonaut in nineteen sixty three. So at the time in the nineteen nineties, I got to talk to most of the women pilots who had gone on to some really interesting flying careers and personal lives and get their stories, and then go around the country and spend some time even at the NASA headquarters History Office, and really dig into their archives and pull that story together.

18:49 Excellent. I'd have one more quick question before I turned you loose on my tprexperts. When I was preparing for the show and I did a search for you on the internet, this picture came up. David got that picture. This is the first picture that popped up, and I wanted to ask you if you could tell us a little bit about this picture. This is a picture from twenty fifteen. So that is the Star Trek Starship Enterprise that was the studio model that was used for those hero shots for the original Star Trek television show in the nineteen sixties. It had been on been in the museum's collection since nineteen seventy four, and in twenty fourteen we were making the decision to take it off display and to really conserve it. And so this then is the band of experts that I was able to bring together. So from the left we have Ariel O'Connor and the striped shirt. She is a Smithsonian conservator. Behind her in the green is Rick Sternbach.

19:54 And then we have Adam who is right behind me, who was really the guru of helping me to pull this whole group together. That's me then with my necklace, and next to me Gary Kerr in front, who really was we started calling him our oracle. He knews everything, and he was around the previous time that this model had been worked on, had taken meticulous notes and was wonderful with that. Behind him in the blue Oxford is Malcolm Column, who is our chief conservator. In front of him are the Akudas, Mike and Denise Akuda. So if you have your Star Trek encyclopedia like I do, and I've got the new double bound slipcase version as well, bringing them in was a no brainer. Behind them in the black is John Goodson, who is an ILM model maker and had worked on other versions of the Enterprise.

20:52 And then John Van Sitters, who in the blue shirt who leads up the Star Trek brand for CBS and Paramount as it has changed. And then in front of him Andy Probert, who designed the Enterprise d as well as the DeLorean for Back to the Future. And so the story on this is that I right away when we started working on this project, I thought, I really need to tap into the people who know this the best. I can know a lot, I learn a lot but these folks know more than I'm ever going to be able to brief myself on. So I ended up in a conversation with the director of the museum at the time, as a retired four star Marine general before he came to the Air and Space Museum, General Jack Daly, and I was telling him that, you know, I'm assembling the money and I'm putting all of these things together to bring this group in person here to be my special advisory committee to really tell us all of the things that we need to know about the enterprise. And he said, like, you're getting experts. I thought, that's why I hired you.

22:02 But this is a place where I can tell you. The expertise that I have says I need these folks. And honestly, we sat down and went kind of soup to nuts, right. You know, We've talked about decals, we talked about windows, we talked about pink colors, we talked about the shapes of everything, about the blinking rates on the different lights. There was so much expertise in this room, and really just being able to have everybody when we had a particular issue come up, to be able to go to them and have them even debate between themselves and then help me come to an answer. And Adam Schneider was right behind me, was just so helpful in he would kind of sidle up to me and say, you know, the next thing you're gonna need to think about is this part. And I think, like yep, right, turning writing that down, starting to with what we're going to need. So it was a project to conserve the artifact, to learn as much about it as we could by working with it, but also to really bring it to where we wanted it to be, and also really to make sure that it was stable and ready to be on display for a good long time. And it is now back on display in the South Lobby of the Boeing Milestones of Flight Hall, in a custom case that honestly every person in that picture had a hand in

23:32 some element of just the case design, let alone the conservation of the object in it. So wonderful group stay in touch with almost everybody in the picture. Christmas cards from them this year, which I'm delighted by, and it's been a wonderful long relationship to be able to stay in touch with that much trek knowledge. Now, one more quick question, is this the same model. In nineteen ninety one, for the twenty fifth anniversary of Star Trek, I went down and they had an enterprise hanging from the ceiling. Is this that same model? This is that same model? For a long time it hung. And what they had done was they really when the museum got this piece in nineteen seventy four, it was a model from a failed three season television show, as heretical as that sounds, and they did also what the practice was in the nineteen seventies was really to make it what the museum needed to tell the story that they wanted to tell. So they kind of drove an eyebolt into the back of it and hung it from the ceiling. So that has since been been removed, and over time, my predecessor had, in fact moved it from being hung to being on a stand. It was built, in fact to be on a stand. It's mostly wood and beutifully engineered and can't deliver that little point right

25:03 under the front of the engineering hall. You can see there's a second point in the back of the stand. Honestly, it'll stand on the one point and on that giant saucer and the big no cells is so beautifully engineered. It just sits there. Now there's a second point, largely because it makes the curator nervous to have an object sitting on one point. I want to make sure that there's some stability added to that. But the cells, which if you've done any model building, the the cells on the enterprise are famously problematic. It always wants to kind of nose down on the saucer. The cells want to you know, display themselves out and not necessarily stay nice and straight and true. This is beautifully put together and really was designed and built in a way that is remarkably stable for something that was only really built and intended to get the shots that needed at the time.

26:02 All right, well, thank you so much, and I am going to pass the microphone over. To v oh. Hi. Well, first off, my mind is just my head is just exploding. And I'm sure it had it had to be surreal from time to time when you're you know, you have a moment to just think and pause and realize exactly what you're working on. So and I sort of I get I understand that a little bit because I am in the museum field. I work in a large eighteenth century living history museum, uh, and so they you know, I don't care how old something is. If it's twentieth century, if it's eighteenth century, you know, the preservation and the care that is taken, you know, is still the same.

26:54 So it's just just And it's also interesting to know how many people in the history field are sci fi nerds. I didn't know that until I started working here, and so I'm going to be sharing this episode with several of my colleagues. Saying, this is what I get to do. But in the vein of history, have you ever heard of this book, Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds? Are you familiar with that? It's a late seventeenth century book, And I thought, yeah, when we I immediately thought of you and your two books, because it was a very forward thinking book for its time, written in sixteen eighty six, and with the possibility of life on other planets, so going with your space craze, but also the fact that the author has this imagined conversation with a full pilosopher and a lady of the gentry class, which that's very forward thinking. So that went I just my mind just went to you know, right, stuff wrong sex, And so the fact that way back then, he you know, considered a female to be a worthy I guess, a worthy partner in talking about things like this,

28:26 even though throughout history the the what women can and can't do is sort of gone, you know, up and down and here and there and everywhere. So but I actually just have I've got a couple of books about that book that got dropped on my desk. Today I'm doing a larger project with some colleagues on the They're interested in questions of habitability in terms of spaceflight, aspiration, things like that, and so I got pulled in as the person who might write about how it's been imagined, what are the fictional visions of habitability things like that, And so this question that assumption that the universe is populated with M class planets, that there are all of these other populated places that you might be able to go.

29:20 But I said, you know, my colleague is very interested in a way I could do a deep, deep dive into this, you know, early seventeenth century conversation, and I kind of want to throw a couple of footnotes under the fact that this is something that you know, once people started looking out with telescopes they've discovered that these wandering stars that we know our planets resolve into, you know, more circles, and you start to imagine, oh, wait a minute, that must be a place like this place, and it jumps pretty quickly to you know, well, maybe there are folks up there who we wonder if they're looking back at us and thinking that the same kind of thing.

30:06 So that question of the plurality of worlds. That really then it's fun to me that the name of it, that you know, idea of them and Shara class planets coming from the vulcan I think gets so identified with Trek, and Trek is such a wonderful illustration of that. But I wanted to yes, I was just actually thinking we're very much on the same way. Cool, because I wanted to be able to say in this, you know, I want to talk about the idea of classifying different kinds of worlds or understanding that there might be the space flight imagining often just depends on this idea that there's lots of places to go.

30:54 So yeah, that's interesting, Yeah, that's very cool. That Yeah, because I think my colleagues probably thought I was a little bit nuts wanting to bring this up, but I knew, I knew it was going to be something worth talking about. So there you go, And I will tell my colleague that fortunately I got the books just in time, so I got to leave through them a bit today and I was prepped for the conversation. Yeah, there you go. That's awesome. So my one last question. Besides the enterprise, and I know you've got a lot of objects there, do you have a second favorite item that you have curated?

31:41 The one that I often mentioned comes from the real memorabilia of the real spaceflight. And we've got a bracelet that is a charm bracelet that was assembled by a woman who's husband was an engineer who worked for McDonald, the company that built the Mercury and the Gemini spacecraft, and she then was putting together this bracelet. It has a Mercury capsule, a Geminy capsule, an Atlas rocket, and a Redstone rocket as well as two jewelers charms engraved to her from grade school classes from Cape View Elementary where she taught. Because the whole family moved to Cape Canaveral, Florida and lived there. So Bob Foster was an electrical engineer and Tony Foster was his wife. And what I like about that object is it's about the relationship from husband to wife. When he was away a lot at work, then he would come home with we finished this part of the project and add some charms to her bracelet.

32:44 But so it was about that marriage that supported his work and space work generally, but also then about the whole family that grew up in Florida watching all of these launches, a part of a community that was supporting the space effort. And honestly, then it begins to tell the story of that whole community. Cape View Elementary began in the nineteen sixties as a brand new school. They just had their fiftieth anniversary because they were built to house and educate the you know, children of all of these engineers who were moving to Florida. So I liked that we get objects like that that are sometimes really the little thing that allows us to tell a big.

33:26 Story and the little things that intertwine and you know, tell our part of the greater story. So very cool. Yeah, thank you so much. All Right, I guess I'll pass it on to my my colleagues who wants to be next. I'll like to fight for it. I believe if David has said the next question. Yeah, hi, hi'd thank you. So I just have a quick question for you. The first one is you spent your career studying how humans experienced space flight, not just the technology. What do you think the public do must understands most about the human side of going to space.

34:15 I always think it's fascinating how much we bring our humanity with us, and maybe that shouldn't be a surprise to anyone who's a fan of trek, because I think that's one of the things that Jean Roddenberry got right right off the bat was, you know, we bring so much of who we are with us into this new space. But that meant that, you know, on Jiminy six, Wally Charon Tom Stafford to astronauts who were also fathers, brought with them a harmonica and jingle bells, and they were flying in December of nineteen sixty five, and so they called back at the end of their mission and said they, you know, thought they might have seen a UFO over the North Pole being drawn by eight times reindeer, and then they played jingle bells into the microphone, you know, with Tom Stafford accompanying on the jingle bells and while the shirah on the harmonica. So the first instruments in space are right off the bat. I mean, you've got the very first flights of humans at all in nineteen sixty one, and by nineteen sixty five you're playing Christmas carols and you know, sending a message back to the children of America. So I love that the ways that people bring who they are and what they like that into space and often now we're also you know, there's great images of Samantha Christopherretti, an Italian astronaut, wearing her Star Trek voyager style uniform in the cupola during her

35:49 time on the International Space Station. So it's things like that from bringing music and videos and you know, communications from home and wanting to bring that into evening, like inventing a zero G coffee cup, because somehow sucking your coffee through a straw, you know, I'm thinking of Eric and his T shirt just doesn't hit the. Same coffee just don't go together now. And so they actually worked out this very graceful looking mug that basically allows the liquid to kind of cling into the inside of the mug and allows you to sip coffee properly. So that's I think part of what I think people don't think. We pay a lot of attention to the big launch vehicles and what gets done, but the very humanness of what we bring into space is I think under appreciated.

36:47 Yeah, it's like a lot of little different technologies that come together to build that vehicle. That's pretty cool. My second question to you is, as space flight shift from the Cold War government project to a mix of national and commercial efforts, how do you think the changes of the stories we tell about space and who gets remembered in history? Oh? Very good. The writing of the history is easier than the collecting of it with objects and V I think will back me up on this that you know, trying to preserve history through things is a great way to do it, but it adds a level of complication, and for us at the National Air and Space Museum, it means that we have had a long relationship with NASA and being able to work with them on bringing objects into the collection as artifacts. We're now developing those relationships with all of these various companies and working with Blue Origin, working with SpaceX, working with you know, bringing a paragrine lander in from Astrobo and that's just you know, I'm going to get myself in trouble by mentioning only some and not everybody. But I could keep you here for another hour if I was doing the whole list of who we are talking to. And so I think that is part of where it gets more complicated. Is it used

38:17 to be slightly simpler or perhaps I think oversimplified story in our memory of the Soviet Union and the United States in this space race, which was very real, but it was always a little more global than it got portrayed as. And now you've got the private companies, and it's always been private companies, you know, McDonald, Boeing, North American Aviation, but now it's a different set of relationships, and we're trying to figure out how do we both preserve that in objects and then tell that story for our visitors when they come to the floor of the museum. Wow. Well, thank you. Fun to hear.

39:00 And I'm gonna have to rewatch the podcast again because it's like a lot of information coming in. So yeah, thank you very much, And I think I'll pass my questions off to the next That question what next? That would be child All right. I think Margaret's eyes kind of lit up when I said twenty sixteen. Yes, I was. Active in the NEA, and so we had our net. We had our annual. Convention in twenty sixteen in Washington, and I had some I had to little a little bit of time spare, spare time off, and of course I wanted to visit one of my favorite Smithsonians, the Air and Space Museum.

39:57 But I'd also at the time heard stories about a brand new display that just got put in the entry of this big model of the USS Enterprise, which I had heard had been dug up from. The basement, the gift shop and the basement. But first question is just what it took to take that model from the basement to where it went got up in the main floor, right there with everybody to see it. So, first of all, I'm going to defend my colleagues who put it in the basement, which was that. So the model has a long history at the museum, had been there since nineteen seventy four, and there was a point in the late nineteen nineties when it was in real danger. There wasn't a place for it. It didn't have a bought and it had been in the art gallery, had moved from place to place in the museum, and honestly, it was in danger of going into what I think of as like Indiana Jones style deep storage back with the arc of the Covenant, and that really folks at the museum who were fans of Star Trek banded together and found money to build it a custom case in the basement of the gift shop, which was being redone

41:28 at the time. So at the time, the attempt was to make sure that it stayed on public view and had its own custom case, which it hadn't before. Right, you saw it hanging from the ceiling, unprotected, with just dust settling on it. But there was a real moment where you know, by about twenty eleven twenty twelve, we're looking at it and really could see that just age had not been kind. I've written about the Star Trek starship enterprise model as it's a genuine nineteen sixties television star, both in the way that people encounter it like they've met a movie star, like they've met a television star, and also then bands would also show up and be disappointed, you know, with this kind of like they got old right, made it look good. It'll looked like I remember them looking on my glowy little cathodray to And so that was the what we ended up doing with that, is getting it connected to the renovations of the Boeing milestones of Flight Hall. And honestly, my colleagues carried that more than I did, because I thought it was going to look really like I'm just working for my own collection and trying to get pride of place. And as much as it deserved, it worked more smoothly because it was my colleague saying no, no, no, no, this is really important and we should make sure that it's included. And so bringing together that special advisory Committee was able to

42:58 commit almost two years of the museum's time to really working carefully to research this and to then document every change that was made, every adjustment, and all of the choices about putting it into the case and putting it on display. I love that that case has two sides. It's open all around, which allows me to go the two sides of the enterprise. So the side that faces faced camera is fully fitted out, has windows, has all the decals, has lots of details on it, and the backside of the model that never faced camera, has no decals, has very little paint. It's really bare, and the wires just come out the back because they didn't they knew that it wouldn't be seen, and so we were able to then on the backside of the left, the backside of the model that doesn't have the decorating, to put Gibbot panels that talk about the art of movie making and television making and what it takes to make this real.

44:10 And then on the side that is the Enterprise as kind of the character, that beloved character of the Starship, we're able to talk about the kind of cultural power of Star Trek and Michelle Nichols and what important vision it was to have men and women of different races working together on a show in the nineteen sixties. So that's a long answer of sorry, Charles, but that's really kind of what it took to get it from the basement up, and then to think about what stories we were going to be able to tell with the two different sides. And I love the chance that I get kind of two bites at the apple there. Yeah, Oh, definitely, I don't mind the story at all, because I've seen some of the videos on the restoration and the work are just incredible the two years they took to.

44:59 What they did with it. Now, my second question comes with the fun part. I got to see the ship, then I had to wait for what lill Saia said what was going on with the ship, and had to come back later in the day to come see when the engineers came down and turn the ship on. I'm curious about the story about what it took to bring that ship to life, and. Tell two quick stories. One is, we have the enterprise model. We have it set to light every hour on the hour for just a few minutes. One of the questions was at the time was well, why don't we just put a button and when you push the button then it lights up. And I said, because then it'll be lit twenty four to seven fans there all the time, and that will defeat the purpose of trying to limit how much that goes on the end of the na celles have elements in them that turn that create that kind of sparkly flashy on the and the front the Boissard collectors, and if that runs all the time, it does basically war on the motors that are in there.

46:11 And so I want to preserve that. So that story one is that we've settled on okay, every hour on the hour so that people can predict it and stand there and get their pictures and patiently come back and get to see it. And then the other part is that found that there's a dichotomy between the people who understand the model as a thing that was used to get shots and the people who come in expecting the enterprise. She right, she's a beauty, and who are talking about really the character of the ship. And I found that when we finished all of the work and we turned the Enterprise on for the first time, people backed up and all of a sudden and nobody thought about it.

47:00 They just did it. They started saying, she looks beautiful. Yes, And I thought, you know, we did it. We brought the character back into it. And I was just, you know, did my heart good? That you know, made me really happy, like, okay, there we are. But I love the chance then that we get to show the model being lit up every hour on the hour, even as we're always trying to minimize kind of the pressure on the objects because we really are in the forever business. But it was just fun seeing actually it looked like it looked almost like two engineers coming in to coming in with the wiring instead of up so good I could be turned on.

47:43 In fact, my talking my Tech Trek talking crew. Sometime I will share the pictures of the Enterprise and my little video of at the ship being being activated. You kind of love seeing that. I suspect that Jabbi and Larry, who are two of our exhibits tech guys, and they're brilliant. Okay, well for this I will send myself over to Paul, because I think Paul's got to his questions now. Thanks Charles, I have a couple that have been arcolating here for the whole time. It is a pleasure, Margaret, thanks for making time to come with us here today. Now I have to confess that in the labyrinth of my house, I also curate a small museum, nothing akin to yours, but I was inspired by your visit to share a couple of things with you. The John Glenn hot wheels, yes, I love that we.

48:40 Have one in the collection, and I have one that I owned from before I came to the museum. I just had to pop that out. And originally tiny little action figures of John Glenn Mercury astronaut, John Glenn Shuttle astronaut and st. John Glenn amazing is adorable that stuff. I love that stuff the only And then this is like, well, I'm sort of outing myself age wise here, friend. But original nineteen sixty nine coloring book. Very nice, you know, with. Because some things about dealing with the space never changed.

49:21 There's always a president who has to like you know, glad hand around, so you know those some things are just you know, timeless. As you say, it's the forever business. Yes, I just had a couple of quick questions. I wanted to tosh your way here. I mean, obviously the enterprise is like your you know, your big star, your huge set piece, and you talked a little bit about ray guns and other things like that. Are there other entertainment items. There's vehicles from science fiction that you're really drawn to that are part of the you know, the big showcase pieces that you love. We have a wonderful play set from the nineteen fifty fifties. That's from Space Patrol, which was a nineteen fifties television show, and it's from a moment when the toy makers were literally taking toys that would otherwise have been Western forts. Right, it has a little stockade that you build with little metal pieces, and then there's a little fort essentially that goes in the middle, and with new lithography, it becomes now a space station with the little wall around it and little aliens and astronauts that can fight each other.

50:31 And we got that from a collector named Michael o'harow, and he was the benefactor who actually gave the museum most of the social and cultural collection, most of our space science fiction objects initially, and the opportunity to really work with that is part of what created the job for a social cultural historian. And he almost didn't give that to the museum because it was his when he was a kid. Right, This wasn't something he was a collector and he enjoyed getting things. And then when he was kind of done with all of his collecting, he was ready to move it to the museum, and he really hesitated on that one because that wasn't just something he bought as an adult, it was where his heart had started with it as a kid. And so we have the little Space Patrol membership card signed by Buzz Cory for him when he was like twelve, and so I love those kinds of things because it's fun putting these objects on display because people will come and stand at the case and I had this, or the kid down the block had that thing, or my cousin had this one, or oh I wanted that. And so everything from Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon through to the Migo set of from the original Star Trek all the way through to We got a great collection of Babylon five memorabilia from a colleague of mine who works in our collections department, and right when I came on board, she said, oh,

52:03 I have a whole lot of Battle on five action figures, us full top or T shirts, all kinds of things that we were able to bring that in. So I love the range of visions. Uh, And that's really what got me working on Space Craze was trying to like get my head around what do these all mean? So the materia for what goes in the exhibit hall is like, is it cool? Do you like it? I mean that we would back to the guilds. It is. What is it cool? It's you know, how durable is it? Will it stand up to being on display? We have much much more at the museum than we can ever put on display, in part because it's also a research collection.

52:47 We want people to be able to come and see the real things for generations, to tell the story of aviation and spaceflight and how they have been imagined and remembered. And then and then we really wrestle over what out of that can we put on display. I just have to ask you, is there something in like say the last twenty years or so, or even longer thirty years of like cop culture, science fiction, television, motion pictures that you just covet that you won in the museum that just it rings your bell. M That's always the hard question, trying to think. We've gotten a few pieces of memorabilia from the expanse. We were able to get Bobby Draper's Martian marine helmet that was actually screen used, and then the other going in a different direction, we have a costume helmet for Master Chief from the Halo video game series. So my colleagues who curated a new exhibit called Futures in Space, which just opened up a year or so ago, did some amazing collect thing to really try to bring the collection up to the present. I will answer it's a Dodge, Paul.

54:06 But I'm going to answer your question by saying that what is so fun about my job is stuff shows up over the transom. I get emails about things, Hey, I have a would you be interested? And all. Sometimes some really interesting stuff just shows up. It was in the back of someone's closet, or it's an urprised thing that's been in the front, and they are suddenly you know, they've hit a circumstance where they're willing to part with it, or they're thinking about a longer term home for something. So I need a better answer to that because I always stutter over it. I can ever think of something else. Okay, it's okay, a.

54:49 Curveball at you. I'm betting you watch for all Mankind? Right, that's oh, yes, yeah, and we're very I was pleased they called a couple of times, uh to ask about archival things, the getting plans for the docking unit before the Apollo soyus of getting trying to get some sense of what the inside of that looked like, and so we were. I was able to point them to our archivists who keep all of this documentation on the history of spaceflight. So I liked the imagination of that kind of alternate timeline of the space age and the ways in which they both huge really carefully to some of the technical details, and then also, you know, just played with the history in some fun ways.

55:36 Yeah, get it. We ever get a chance to get hold of Mark Kelly's gorilla out. Clear to me that Mark Kelly's guerrilla suit came home, so and it may still be up there. I'm not sure they spent down mass to get that back. And and honestly, one of the issues in a space where you can't open the windows is that things can get a little stinky. I'm not I wonder about that suit. I just love it. Yeah, so funny, genius, Absolutely genius. Okay, last question, because I know that Trexpert Eric is ready to like chew off his army. Was I going to wrap this up? But you're a little girl and the television's on, and maybe it's Star Trek, maybe it's something else. Was there a moment for you that just kind of made the lights go on your dashboard and go wow, science fiction? Holy moly?

56:29 All right? Was that a Star Trek thing because you mentioned like the eighties or do you have a memory of that that just really like, wow, I was. Exactly the right age to watch Star Wars in the theater. And the story on that, which I don't remember as much, is that my mother had taken my brother and I and I would have been about six, and the opening crawl starts until she's reading it to my younger brother who's four, and I apparently say I can read like I was very offended was being read out loud. So uh, and that's a very Margaret story. I was an early reader and a voracious reader, and so I would say.

57:16 The other thing that kind of grabbed my Madeline Langles a Wrinkle in Time, which isn't a kind of rocket to space story, but is certainly a you know, expansive story of thinking about you know, talking about a tesseract, talking about bringing these real science concepts into this wonderful adventure story of you know, Meg Murray and and you know it's a girl named Margaret who goes on adventures and has a boyfriend. So like, you know, super fun, great vision of you know, what could be possible, and there weren't always uh, even you know, seventies eighties. It was I was twelve by the time Sally Ryde was going up, and you started to get to see more examples of women and girls doing things in those kinds of fields. So so those would be a couple of the places where the lights turned on for me. We're both in watching and also in reading.

58:15 Those are those touchstones that never leave us. So fantastic. Well, Margaret, you're a delight friend, and thank you so much for being so open and sharing everything. I'm I didn't think i'd be saying this sentence this year at all, but you make me want to go to Washington, DC. So I'm gonna have to visit the I'm gonna I'm gonna have to visit the Smithsonium. I've never been, so I have to. I gotta get myself down there. But yes, now I have on the top of the hour though, now that I know the secret thing. So thank you my friend Trexpert Eric, who is just I cannot even tell you the avalanche of cascading.

58:55 Questions he's about the radiation coming from me. I curated my special moon landing background just in honor of having Margaret. Margaret, it's just such a delight to have you here. I can't tell you how much. Actually, the National Air and Space Museum meant to me as a kid. So I was, you know, a kid born in the early seventies, kind of like I didn't see Star Wars in the theaters, but I saw Return of the Jedi when I was seven, right, So I was like right in the middle of that kind of space craze thing. And as soon as I learned that there was a national museum that featured space travel, I just lost my stuff, right, So child of the early eighties grew up in love with the Shuttle program.

59:45 I remember one of my very first science projects was a you know, one of those dioramas like the Tripartheid dioramas with pictures of the Shuttle that I had drawn and how I'd learned about the booster rockets and the you know, the retro rock it's that like steer it in space and all this kind of stuff. So just very very part of that space culture of the early eighties. And I actually finally got to go to the Air and Space Museum in high school for the first time, and then I got to go for a second time back in two thousand and nine, so it has been a little while since I've been there. Also, just as a point of information. I don't know if you know or not been in Oregon. We actually have a really cool Air and Space museum. It's in a place called McMinnville, Oregon, and we have things like a V two rocket and an SR seventy one Blackbird, a stealth fighter and the Spruce Goose is there and all that kind of stuff.

1:00:41 But getting past all of that, I'm also an architect, and so I'm really interested in your big renovation. I know it's been going on for many, many years, and I understand that maybe this summer is kind of like the Grand Shenanigans that sort of celebrates the whole thing. So I would love to know more about your big renovation. The couple of new cool exhibits that you have, the Milestones of flight and the Pioneers of Flight exhibits, It's like, what did it take to get there? What was that whole process like? So this began years ago. So the National Air and Space Museum building on the National Mall was opened on July one of nineteen seventy six. It was a bi centennial present to the country. So for the two hundredth birthday of the country, the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the nation gave itself a National Air and Space Museum, building a build the museum had existed before, but hadn't had its own space for objects, and so it's a very nineteen seventy six thing. You come in, there's the right flyer hanging right in the middle, and right in front of that the Columbia Command Module that brought Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldurn and Mike Collins back from the Moon in nineteen sixty nine. And if you're an American, then you're the citizen of the nation that invented the airplane and just walked on the moon. Happy birthday. So that has been you know, where that building started. And

1:02:13 then we were looking forward to the fiftieth anniversary of that building, which is coming up Midsummer of July one this year. We really started the process years ago, in you know, twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen, of realizing that the building, which had come in on time and under budget in the nineteen seventies, had really suffered from age and so we had problems with h fact, we had problems with leaks, the water problems inside the building, and then also just it was not up to you know, what visitors expect now and what we would want to have in terms of, you know, just wiring and everything that we want to have, and so we wanted to put that all on display.

1:02:59 So they came to the curators and they said, if we're gonna essentially have to rebuild the whole building, we're not going to take it out all down ever, but we're going to do it in stripes and we're going to work our way down. And if you had to take everything out of the building and put it all back, would you put it back the same way? And the answer, of course, if we're any good at our job should be is no. Right, Like, we have new objects, we have new stories. There's all this new stuff going on in this space program. As David pointed out, we want to be able to tell those stories to put that stuff on display. And that's how we end up assigning ourselves the job of doing twenty plus galleries at a time, which is kind of bananas in retrospect and in the doing of it now. So we're excited. We've got seven more galleries that are going to come online this year.

1:03:49 I think at least almost all of them will be done by that July one date. We're excited about this whole year as the anniversary. So it's the two hundred and fiftieth birthday of the nation, it's the fiftieth birthday of the building. And I will say Eric that one of the things that we're trying to do and we really keep in mind is when we tell people we're at the Air and Space Museum, when people come to us, it's a beloved place, like people have these really formative memories of like what they saw there when they came and so we and we had that that's how we ended up there in the first place. So we're trying to live up to that and think about, you know, how do we bring people back with the favorites. So having the belex one that broke the sound barrier with Chuck Yeger or my.

1:04:39 Favorites who I love that exhibit. That exhibit is so cool. Like the first time I saw it, I was like, let me explain to you how the sound barrier was broken, and let me explain to you what a sonic boomy is because I'm such a nerd that I totally understood it way back when. So we've we've got all of those things, and then we're really thinking about, you know what else it's going on now, how do we talk to people about the work that's being done on the International Space Station, or really imaginative ways that people are thinking about, you know, what's going to be possible. We've got a mock up of a Mars habitat and one of the ideas that you know, real scientists engineers are playing with right now is essentially, can you three D print on Mars using the materials that are there? Right, it's not going to be realistic to bring things to bring building materials with you, but can you build bricks out of the regular you know that you've got pictured behind you? Can you scoop up bits of Martian? It's not soil, right, because it has to have a biological component to be soil. I work with too many geologists and they've broken me and I can't think of what it's not regulars? Somehow that's moon.

1:05:57 But basically, can you scoop up the you know, the dust and dirt there and create something out of it that would then be able to protect people? So anyway, those are the kinds of stories that we are getting to tell, and it's been a tremendous process of trying to do the best by the artifacts and then the three D experience, and then where are the places where we're bringing media in UH, and we're able to interview people and really have you know, the faces and voices of people talking to you about the work. That they do. Mm hmm, that's fantastic. I guess on so on any one day, what percentage of your collection is actually on display versus.

1:06:45 In the. In the basement there the majority is it? And we don't have on site storage just for so it is we have a whole facility that is offsite in UH in Maryland, and UH it's I don't know what our current numbers are. I should have looked it up, but it's I think we're going to have like twenty twenty five percent something like that on display, right, we have far more. Uh, that's not and and some of that's deliberate in order to have a research collection. The idea is that you know, generations from now, when people want to know the real history of aviation and spaceflight, they should be able to come and see the things.

1:07:28 You know. The analogy that often gets used is, you know, it's one thing to have all of these excellent history books. It's like having a copy of you know, Julia Child's cookbook. But if you could also have a pot of beef borgnon, you know, that you could test that, you could taste that, you know, as opposed to just the instructions. How wouldn't that enrich your understanding of it? And that in many ways is what you know. A museum is a material library that allows us to preserve those things. And we know, you know, NASA comes and want to see heat shields when they're working on heat shields and wants to be able to look at what was done with mercury geminy Apollo, and then as they're building the ones for the Orion spacecraft, they're looking at you know, how they know the recipes for what was built on Apollo, and they want to be able to see how did that hold up over time and how does that help them in understanding what they're building now. So it's a collection that gets used all the time, and both for exhibit and education, but also for research purposes as well.

1:08:34 That's just amazing. And I know that when I, like I said, I've only been there twice. The last was way back in two thousand and nine. But when you stand there sort of looking around, immersed by all of this history, you get a little bit of a special tingle. Right. It's like, I can't really describe it, but it's a moment when you feel connected to other human beings from the past. You feel connected to things that you like, like science and science fiction and things like that. You feel connected to the fact that there are actually physical objects there that you're looking at. You know, the first time I ever I would love for you guys to somehow get a space shuttle. But the first time I ever went to the California Science Center, I got to see the space Shuttle Endeavor and I walked into the room and I started crying. It was like such a seminal moment in my life to like finally see a space shuttle. And I feel like the Aeron Space Museum is that way, you know, the breaking the sound barrier Spirit of Saint louis actually David, do you have the little image there? I wanted to show you. This is a poster that has been hanging on my wall since about me and I just you wouldn't believe the number of hours that I spent as a small boy kind of staring at this poster imagining the world's right. That were part of this poster. So I just wanted to share that really quickly with you.

1:09:59 Yeah, I will mention. So the Air and Space Museum has a second facility. We're one museum with two sites, and we have the Steven Food Varhauser Center, which is out by Dallas Airport, so it's about forty five minutes away from what's in downtown. But that has allowed us to put larger things on display, including the Flowe Space Shuttle Orbit or Discovery, but also an SR seventy one spyplane at Concorde, supersonic plane from air Front, Anola Gay is out there, Huey helicopter. So it really as we try to put more of our collection on display, it gives us a space to put some of the very big things.

1:10:43 It sounds like I need to go back. I'm also very excited about one of your newest things that I don't know if it's on display, if it's coming up on display, but the Ingenuity Space helicopter, Yes, it. Is on display now. So humanity has flown a helicopter on an the world on Mars, and so we have the flight spare of the Ingenuity helicopter. Someday we'll have to send a curator up to Mars to go collect the first one. One. But for right now, you can come to the it's actually out at the Udvarhazi Center, and you can see the flight spare of that helicopter that has flown on another world. That's fantastic. So, you know, I mean, I think we've already kind of answered this question a little bit. But as you know, if somebody's been to the National Air and Space Museum in the past, but they haven't been for a while, why should they come? Why should they Why should they come and check out?

1:11:40 What do you like? What do you have? I think what we have is it's a really refreshed space that puts things in front of you in a new way. The World War One gallery is amazing, just you know, it gives a whole new vision of that war in the era and on the ground. With the stop with camel, that's one that we know, many of us know from Snoopy and his battles with the Red baron, but an actual stop with camel in the center of the gallery. So we've got a wonderful exhibit on called the Nation of Speed, and that looks at kind of you know, our fascination with going fast and everything from race cars to rocket engines, rocket sleds. There is another small one of the a MT models of the Starship Enterprise on display there. You know that idea of warp speed of going you know, faster than the speed of light.

1:12:37 So I think that's an awful lot of fun. I'm excited that we're going to bring back online gallery called How Things Fly, which is really our science centery kind of gallery about the forces of flight. So if you've got you know, kids who like to touch stuff for adults who like to you know, touch stuff and play with things and learn about the science of you know, of gravity and lift. And we'll have a wind tunnel in there where kids can go in and put different models of wings on and feel how the difference it makes in the airstream. So I'm just really excited about the ways that we were able to bring Also, some of it's literally wallpaper. People walk past it. I don't know that they notice it, but we sweated all the details on creating these wonderful collages that are projected onto our walls of archival images that come from the museum's archives, from all of these photographs of objects in the collection, but also from the historic collection, and being able to have those on the walls. We curators are poor in the empty space, and given the opportunity to have some projections and to bring some of the images from our archives into be able to show the public, we were excited to be able to put that out as well.

1:13:57 So I think it's the objects, but I think they're presented in a way that we hope is really engaging for families and school groups. And one of the things that you know, we know very few people go to a museum by themselves. Some do, uh if you're you know, visiting for work, but very often you're there with a group, and so we're trying to create those opportunities for you to have that family experience, for you to share things, to notice things together, and to enjoy the museum in that way. Sounds like an amazing place. I can't wait to make my way back to the East Coast to check it out. I guess in closing, I always like to ask questions about the person that we're interesting.

1:14:39 So, so Margaret, what do you do for fun when you're not curating awesome museum stuff, like. What do you do? I'm still a reader. I'm working my way through the last novel in Mary Rominettekel's Lady Astronaut series right now, and I've been in doing that, and I have Atmosphere on hold at the public library. They just let me know that that's there. My sister in law let me know that that's a novel that I should probably be reading. So I'm looking forward to discussing that with her. And then my family has two dogs who are currently created so that they don't ruin this, and you know, literally happier than just you know, putting a good you know, three to five miles on the dogs and myself outside.

1:15:35 You know, Virginia has many wonderful trails in the DC area is a great place to go for good long walks. So something that that's what I like to do. I like to you know, exercise, walk, run and read. Oh my gosh, well that's that's fantastic and not unlike the way we live in the Northwest up here, lots of time outside, lots of walking around, lots of enjoying nature. So I'm going to pass you back to Jim, but Margaret, thank you so much for joining us today. It's been a real treat to talk to somebody who's in such a cool position, like you're literally living I think the dream right you're. Are you not?

1:16:15 Are you not living the dreams? More meetings than you would think, So I will throw that in there. It is. It is a dream job, and it is a wonderful set of colleagues to get to do the work with the people who are really passionate about wanting to do this right and wanting to preserve the history and really make sure that it's serving the public as well as it can be. So and we're very proud. I will just throw in the being a national museum. We're mostly federal employees, and so we consider this work that we're doing, you know, for the nation and the world to preserve this history. Absolutely.

1:16:56 I think. I think David has another question for you. David. Yeah, it's just a really quick, curious question speaking of women influences the whole space genre and exploration. I was curious, have you ever met Nicholas Nicole Nicole Nicholas, the poson who played her. Yes, Michelle Nichols, Yes, Yes, I had met her at I first got to meet Michelle Nichols. I was actually writing an academic article about the Ahura character for a book that was being put together on Star Trek and history, and I thought, well, wouldn't it be interesting to kind of look at how that character started with the original series and then you know, through the various movies and other iterations of it. And a colleague from NASA called Michelle Nichols was in town. NASA was doing a performance at the Kennedy Center and she was going to be singing, and he needed to do some other things during the day and would I be willing to essentially babysit Michelle Nichols for an hour or so? Yeah? Yes, And she was so gracious because I, you know, sat down, we sat down in the museum and I said, you know, I'm working on this article, and all of a sudden, she's telling me the story in person about Doctor King

1:18:30 and the whole episode where she was considering leaving the show, but then she met Doctor King at an NAACP event and he persuaded her to stay, and how important that has been. And I actually it was funny because one of the museum photographers took a picture, and I'm sitting with my little recording device and I have my head cocked and I look very serious in historiany, and she's telling me this story and I know that inside. Of I can't believe. This story directly from her. And I went back upstairs, you know, finished that, went back upstairs and called the editor and was like, I'm going to be late because I am ripping my article up and starting over with I talked to Michelle Nichols, and this is good. I have this story much better now. So yes, she was very gracious. I used to then occasionally see her at conventions if I was speaking and she was speaking, and she was always nice enough that I, you know, walk up and just say hello and remember to her, and you know, and I think I was almost always to say thank you because I think, you know, really the work that was done made such a difference for depiction on screen and has had such a lasting cultural impact.

1:19:51 Wow. Cool, that's a really fun story, and thank you. Okay, uncle Jim, I'm going to question before. Yes, I'm actually going to because we have a guest in our chat named c k. It had a couple of questions from this first quar. Their first question was, will space X ever have an exhibit? SpaceX will probably not have a solo exhibit, but we certainly have SpaceX materials and we have images already. They're doing such important work with Cargo and Crew Dragon, with with the whole satellites constellation of being able to you know, really revolutionize communications. So yes, we are actively in conversation and you will see them already in images on the floor, and we're thinking about ways in which sometime that is something that we would really love to be able to represent on the floor. And we are very interested in the pioneering work that they're doing.

1:21:03 And they had a second question was, I think it's interesting. Can people have sprint levels of higher G force at the museum? Hmm, unless you jump in the elevator, I'm not sure. No, I think what we can We've sometimes done some really fun things with simulation. We've got a shake table in the floor in the America by Error exhibit that gives you a sense of if you flew on a Ford tri motor, how absolutely unglamorous that would have been at the time, and the way that you really would We've got a little teacup that you can see just dancing around from the vibrations that you would have gotten. So we think a little bit about sound. In the Right Brothers exhibit, there's a whole section on their testing in Kildevil Hills in North Carolina, and you'll hear behind you seagulls crying and the sound of the surf. And we do try to do something that give you and more atmospheric sense of the space, but we have not yet figured out how to create either microgravity or increased ges in the space of the museum.

1:22:14 Great question though, all right, well, well before you wrap things up, I have one final question for you. Is this is going to be a tough one. This is going to be a thinker. What did you think about our intro? So I was waiting for I was hoping there wasn't going to be a quiz because I was thinking, I think I can name almost everything as it pops up, very clever. Really enjoyed the intro and the expansiveness of the the trek talking and being able to see quite so many different representations of space science fiction in there. That was very fun.

1:22:56 That Oh it was fun, I can add I just joined the podcast last I think it was the end of May, last May, and so I don't know if you noticed how my little avatar, you know, being sort of appears. I can't. I never get tired of that. I'm sorry. I have a I'm easily amused, but I never get tired. I love it too V. I know. That was that was a miracle of David. With that, I guess we're going to say good night, Margaret, thank you so much for having Thank you so much, thank you.

1:23:49 I'll just as a few people have said they wanted to come to the museum, please come, and I will invite your listeners as well. Come and see us. Visit either the center around in Chantilly or are building on the National Mall. We're really excited to have more of it open this year and to have people come and see what we've been able to do and the collection that really belongs to the American people. Thank you for your work. Yes, thank you, thank you. So so great, Thank you, Margaret. Good night to night. I believe phenomenal Academy premiere tonight. Actually, so we can go and go and watch that. And I think you guys want to do some some sci fi birthdays, sure, do it allright, So let me queue up the there we go.

1:24:47 Yeah, that was not a Klemon song. All right, guys? Is it the part of the show where we remember our sci fi berkes and we always start off with remember I'm along with us, and so that we turned to a yeah Jim. This week we're going to remember seven members of our sci fi community that have gone before us. The first is actor Mitchell Ryan, the actor from Louisville, Kentucky, who portrayed Kyle Riker in the Next Generation second season episode The Icarus Factor Believe it or not. Earlier, Mitchell was actually a contender for the role of Captain Jean Luke Picard, but he's probably best known for his appearances in Lethal Weapon and Dharma, As and Greg, as well as for his role as Burke Devlin on the nineteen sixties cult series Dark Shadows, which if you have never seen but you like that kind of stuff, you should check it out.

1:25:59 He also started Hugh Hefner. Opposite bb Besch and John Boki in the Death of a Centerfold The Dorothy Stratton Story. Fantastic movie, very very interesting, lots of movies throughout the nineties. That's kind of where I remember him was from the nineties, including Halloween, The Curse of Michael Myers, and lots of television through the seventies, eighties and nineties. His career sort of culminated in a project he participated in, something called Smartphone Theater, which is still running as far as I know, but it was a thing that kind of started at the beginning of COVID. He was on a couple of episodes in twenty twenty one. So Mitchell Ryan lost just back in twenty twenty two at the age of eighty eight years old. Happy birthday to Mitchell. Happy birthday as well to Felix Anthony Sila, the actor and stuntman who appeared as a telusion in the TOS pilot The Cage. He did not, however, receive credit.

1:26:52 For this role. Felix actually hiled from a small village outside of Rome, Italy, and was only three foot eleven inches tall. He began his career in show business, as one would I guess, back in the thirties forties fifties as a circus performer, and toured with the Ringling Brothers in Barnum and Bailey Circus. Following his arrival in the United States in nineteen fifty five. In the early nineteen sixties, he broke into acting and stunt work. One of his best known roles is that of the short hair covered, gibberish speaking cousin it on the classic nineteen sixties television series The Adams Family. He's also known for playing the robot Tweaky, who we feature in our opening credits on the science fiction series Buck Rogers in the twenty fifth century. Felix also just did a ton of stunt work stunts for Battle of the Planet of the Apes, The Towering Inferno, The hennenberg Et Poltergeist, Indiana Jones of the Temple of Doom. The credits just keep on coming. So lost back in twenty twenty one, at the age of eighty four years old, Felix Anthony Sela was a real gem and we do miss your contributions Star Trek and Beyond. Happy birthday, Felix, Happy birthday.

1:28:03 To ray Bolger. And you say, but Eric ray Bolger was never on Star Trek. Yes, but that's because we go beyond right. Born in nineteen oh four, Why would we possibly feature this guy? Well, Like Gene Kelly, he was a song and dance man as well as an actor. He was signed to a contract with MGM and his very first role was as himself in The Great Zigfield from nineteen thirty six. No kidding, If you haven't seen that movie, you should go check it out. I've seen it. In nineteen fifty three, he turned television and received his own sitcom called Where's Raymond would later changed to the name of The Ray Bolger Show. He also played Vector in the original Battlestar Galactica television series episode Greetings from Earth from nineteen seventy nine. We've got some pictures here, but of course he's best known in his role as the MGM movie star. Can I say star, I love I always love the Scarecrow, of course, was in The Wizard of Oz from nineteen thirty nine playing the Scarecrow. What a great actor, what a great role. Just the way that he plays that character and kind of the physical comedy that goes along with it is so subtle but so amazing to me. So Ray Bolger a real gem of screen and stage. Happy birthday to him. Happy birthday as well to Chursy Ali, the American actress and spokesmodel from which Tauk Kansas, who made her feature film debut playing Savag in Star Trek two, The Wrath of Khn.

1:29:34 For her performance in this film, Ali was nominated for a Saturn Award by the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films. She was actually offered the chance to reprise that role in Star Trek Tree three, The Search for Spock, but disagreements over her payscale led to an intensive recasting search, which gave us Robin Curtis, who is a friend of the show. She has been on the podcast Is it more than once? Jim? I don't know. I just remember his being an absolutely delightful guest to have on the show. My personal favorites Savac, but Christy Ali also very awesome. Of course, we know her from being on Cheers and various other things such as starring as Veronica Chase on the NBC sitcom Veronica's Closet, so lots of stuff in her portfolio. Happy birthday to Christy Ali.

1:30:22 We lost her also just back in twenty twenty two at the age of seventy one years old. Happy birthday to Barry Francis Jenner, the actor who played Admiral William Ross on Deep Space nine six and seven. Seasons. He also voiced Admiral Ross in the video game Star Trek Deep Space nine Dominion Wars. He made a living performing on television. I mean you look all over the place. You're talking guest roles here and there, including starring roles like his recurring role as police Lieutenant Lou Martog on the sitcom Family Matters. He played this role for three years. We absolutely knowed and love and Jim, you always ask me about admirals, and you say, Eric, is it a good admiral or admiral? And let me just say that Admiral Ross, for me is one of the best. This was a man who was actually driven by fear a little bit right. Dominion War, you got the shape changers, you got all kinds of crazy stuff going on. But he doesn't make rash decisions. Somehow He's in a super duper stressful situation, but he makes calculated, well thought out decisions.

1:31:28 He hunkered down, he trusted people around them, trusted the council he was given, and he got the job done. So literally, Admiral Ross is probably my favorite starfleet admiral, or at least top five of my favorite star fleet admirals of all time. Thank you Barry Francis Jenner for being an awesome Admiral Ross, among many many other things. Lost back in twenty sixteen at the age of seventy five years old. Happy birthdays well to Carl Weathers. And you say, Eric, but Carl Weathers wasn't on Star Trek, Well, I know it's okay, going beyond once again. He of course, is an actor, director, and former professional football player who appears as Grief Karga in the Star Wars series The Mandalorian, one of the best out there. He's also, of course known for his work in Predator as Al Dylan and in the Rocky series as Apollo Creed. No question, Carl Weathers has so many credits to his name that we have no time to talk about them right now, but just suffice to say that we lost him about a year ago February first, just last, sorry, two years ago, twenty twenty four is when we lost him, and I think we miss him. I think we all love that personality, that face, his amazing physique. So Carl Weathers, thank you so much for your contributions to this world, not Star Trek, but Star Wars and Beyond and last but not least I would like to wish happy birthday to Joe Anne Lynnville, the actress who played the female Romulin commander who in

1:33:00 some areas has a name but in others doesn't anyway. In the original series, she was in the third season episode The Enterprise Incident Lynnville. Lynnville was, of course, the first actress to play a female Romulin in the Star Trek franchise, and for the Next Generation six season episode Face of the Enemy, writer Naren Shankar suggested that Lynnville reprise her role as the Romulin Commander, but unfortunately she was not available. Wouldn't that have been cool to see her in the next Generation? Oh my gosh, I can't believe we didn't get that. She did begin her acting career early in the nineteen fifties. It included a lot of small roles in feature films, including playing Burt Lancaster's wife in the nineteen seventy three action thriller Scorpio. One really cool thing is that the actress Amy Ridell, who of course is the daughter of Joanne Linnville, later got to reprise her mother's role as the Romilly and kempanander for the Fans series Star Trek continues in the two part finale to Boldly Go. Lynnville herself participated in the fan audio drama Starship Excelsior for the fiftieth anniversary special Tomorrow's Excelsior, reprising her role as the Romailan Commander. Fantastic actress.

1:34:21 What a memorable role. Thank you so much to Joanne Lynnville for your contributions to Star Trek and Beyond and that guys does it for our remembrances this week. So I will pass our flaming birthday candle on to Charles. Thank you, Eric DEVI excuse me, this looks like these next Yeah, I got. Sorry, it's on me this time. Okay, I just got three birthdays on it. Let's start at A Happy birthday is Sam Richardson, actress of Boyd Vendom and Star Trek Lower Decks first and third season episodes Tempa Edict and The Stars at Night. He also played Quasi in Star Trek Section thirty one. Happy Birthday to Omar Hardwicke, actress that played Hack Sar in Star Trek Section thirty one, Happy Birthday to Andrea.

1:35:20 Martin is an Emmy Award winning and Tony Award winning. Address comedian, voice, actress, and writer who originally role the role of Isaka in Star Trek d Space nine Thursdays in the episode Family Business, Now Fest. And Now a PLAUSI faming flaming the candle over to Paul. Thank you, Charles, appreciate that friend. Okay, I got a gem here for your friends. Four January tenth. Is the legendary William Sanderson. Okay, known primarily well, he's been in everything.

1:36:02 He's one of those faces that you just see in everything. But I think with the reason he of course is coming across our transom here is because this is the guy in Blade Runner who played legendary J. F. Sebastian. Right, they're toys. My friends are toys. I made them right. I mean, he's just phenomenal, right, amazing character. But he's been in everything. He's been in True Blood, he's been in the legendary television series Deadwood as Eb Farnham. I mean, the guy is just all over the place and a phenomenal, poignant character actor, absolutely just tremendous work anytime you see him. So, William Sanderson, you are a legend. He was also in the television series New Heart that sequel series for quite a while True Blood. I think I mentioned and also we heard earlier from our wonderful guest Babylon Five and William Sanderson was a Bad Five veteran as well, So absolutely phenomenal to be able to wish you a happy birthday, sir.

1:37:02 Happy birthday goes out to Janet Kidder, actress who played Oh Cyril in the third season of Star Trek Discovery, mixing it up with that Oriyan nonsense and Shenanigan's there Ohsira. Kind of a dangerous wild card, as I recall. So, Janet Kidder, happy birthday. Will we ever see your character again? Who can say? In the world of Star Trek, where people have agents who keep calling, keep getting hired, so you never know and super I feel very fortunate, indeed to be able to wish happy birthday to this next individual who I am a just colossal fan of way underrated, the absolutely amazing Michelle Forbes. Okay, of course in Star Trek.

1:37:47 Let's just need it serious. Okay, she originated the role of rol Laren ba Joran on Next Gen and then also came back to do the role again on Picard. But what incredible character for the first time somebody was a little bit like not the squeaky clean, everything's awesome on Star Trek. I mean they brought her in as a kind of a dar horse, right, somebody who really had problems and had a past and a bit of a chip on her shoulder, and just became one of the most incredibly fascinating characters in all of Star Trek. I think, very human and just tremendous. Not content to stay out of science fiction, Michelle Forbes is easily seen in just dozens of different things. Of course, for me, the revamped Battlestar Galactica, where she played rather a darkly character Admiral Helena Kine. A bit of a nemesis there with who not on what I would go morally ambiguous perspective if you will, but absolutely amazing work from her as commander of the I'll start pegasust. She was on True Blood, just like William Sanderson was, Hunger Games, Mocking Jay, John Carpenter's Escape from La Star Trek, Picard where she reprised Roe Larn's role, Grey's Anatomy in Everything Right, and also a really well done movie that a lot of

1:39:18 people missed out on with David company called California, California with a K if you've never checked that out. Juliet Lewis is in it along with Brent Pitt. It's really a great little thriller, powered dynamically by Michelle Forbes, so a real powerhouse and never gets the amount of attention I think that she deserves. She's just an ace all the way. That's what I've got. Let's pass that birthday Bazooka. Who were to Uncle Jim. I thank you so much, Paul. I've only had two for you guys this week. First of all, we want to say happy birthday to Sherman Augustus, former NFL player who played ok Here we Go, Hidge Sta and Voyager six season episode Barge of the Dead. Best known for his roles is Nathaniel Moon in the AMC series Into the Badlands and Lieutenant Colonel Jack Sullivan and season four and five of Stranger Things. Happy birthday and Kapa to Sherman Augustus and last on my list, Klingon Surprise he guys shot. We want to say happy birthday apply to Charlie brill Yackt, who played Arn Darvin and COS second season episode The Trouble with Triples, and he reprised that role in the DS nine fifth season episode Trials and Tribulations, and there he is on the screen, Happy birthday, capplot to Charlie Brill.

1:40:46 I know, spoiler alerts. If you haven't seen the episode. Yeah, uncle Jim, why don't you ask Margaret what her favorite Start Trek movie is? We are? We are. Because because. You notice it's almost you know, it's almost nine fifteen, and you didn't mention it once. Well, when we were talking about life being a dream, I almost threw it in there, but I decided not to.

1:41:28 My favorite Star Trek movie is Star Trek The Final Front here. So a lot of people don't like it, and he will find a way to bring it into almost any conversation. So that's why. It's great. Yeh. Jim will be like, I can't open this can of beans. That reminds me of It's literally like that often kind of a thing, the car start that reminds me Started five. My dog and catter fighting that reminds me of Star Trek, Star Trek. Do you have a favorite Star Trek movie?

1:42:10 You know? I tend to bring out Star Trek first contact because the discussion of the Phoenix built by Zepp from Concorde and that they've only ever seen in at the Smithsonian, and I down the Math and I will probably be long retired, but maybe somebody can wheel me in in the back and I'll be there when it gets there. Nice. Yeah, she did talk about Michelle Nichols, who did a great fan dance at Start Trek five. So all right, well guys, guess what it is, timon go watch Starfleet Academy. Yeah, so you know, I just want to say thank you so much to you Margaret for hanging out and Shrek talking with us and putting up with us tonight. Thank you so so much taking time on your busy schedule for TK talks.

1:43:05 Great group, Thanks so much for the conversation. And of course, thank you so much you Paul for hanging out and Threk talking with us and I as well. Thank you, Paul. What a treat. I can't imagine having ever missed this. This is like one of the legendary episode in the podcast. I mean, what a what an absolute privilege to get to have some time with Margaret tonight. Wonderful. I'm just grateful that people like her out there preserving history. You know, we need it. A good year for trek talking and thank you so much for hanging out. Thank you so much, Eric, absolutely, thank you so much Margaret for joining us and as Paul said, putting up with us. You ruled right with the humor, so I loved it.

1:43:51 It was a good time. And thank you so much to you for hanging out and trunk talking with. Us has been highlight of my day, especially since you know we've had that connection with the conversations on the plurality of world. So Margaret, that's so that just blows my mind that you you know, we are working on that. So hope you enjoy it. And yeah, just to see what happened some three hundred years ago, really amazing. Thank it is all right. Thank you so much, and thank you Charles. For hanging out and struck talking with us. Thank you so much.

1:44:33 Jol Oh, thank you bringing back memories of twenty sixteen and my visit to the visit to the museum and all the great stories she's got. Thank you. And last but not least, thank you to David for putting together these awesome slide shows the birthdays and all the work you do on the podcast. Thank you so much, David, very welcome. This has been really funny, and I just want to stay to Live Long and Prosper. And of course i'm your most excellent host, Uncle Jim saying, everybody please stay safe and be good to each other. Ailing frequencies are closed. Live Long and Prosper. Everybody, good night, good night all, Live Long and Prosper.

1:45:20 I'm ready for departure. Some problem RCA. I'm just hoping this isn't the usual way our missions will go. Said, Oh, no, number one. I'm sure most will be much more interesting. Let's see what's out there. Engage. Okay, that's it, guys,