Welcome to my Space Is The Place* home page. I have been
interested in spaceflight all my life. Perhaps this resulted from my coming of
age and developing an awareness of the larger world during the 1960's, when
mankind made its first tentative steps beyond our protective Earth, decided
that the Moon was the first goal, and BY GOLLY GOT THERE WITHIN THAT SAME
DECADE!!! Pretty impressive for someone of my age in those years (i.e. 6 to
16), and proof to me that anything is possible. Mankind's destiny has to be
in space.
"The dinosaurs went extinct because they didn't have a space program"
- Arthur C. Clarke, science/science fiction writer, visionary and author of "2001 - A Space Odyssey"
My Space Is The Place website consists of two main parts:
*Note - credit for the name of this website goes to the late jazz band leader, black prophet and native of the planet Saturn (so he claimed), Sun Ra, who titled a song, album and film "Space is the Place". (note this is an MP3 file, as are other audio files on this page)
Edgar Mitchell visits "the Shrine" - in June 2006 I was honoured to have Dr. Edgar Mitchell, Apollo 14 astronaut and sixth man to walk on the Moon, visit my home, and in particular the "Shrine" (click to go page 3 with "Shrine" section).
* NOW AVAILABLE * Click on banner below for information about Chris Gainor's (one of the "Baikonour Boys") books "Arrows to the Moon" (2001) published by Apogee Books and Chris' second book "Canada In Space" (2006) published by Lone Pine Publishing, and to access Chris' Canadian Space History pages. Click here for an interview with Chris about Arrows to the Moon.
Over the past 15 years or so I have been privileged to be able to visit several of the world's most important space centres. For someone with a life long interest in this subject like me, this has been a thrill beyond words. My trips to the following space centres are briefly reviewed below:
In July, 1992 I toured space facilities in Russia and Khazakstan with a group of 24 people for about ten days. While we did the usual tourist things like see Red Square and the Kremlin, for we "space cadets" the highlight of the trip was a three day visit to the Baikonour Cosmodrome, the once top secret Soviet spaceport on the steppes of central Asia in Khazakstan.
This is a photo of our tour group in front of a sign (in Russian, of course) announcing "Baikonour". I am top left popping my head out from behind the fellow in the red and white striped shirt with a hat. I have become life-long friends with a number of the fellows I met on this trip, the so called "Baikonour Boys". You will see reference to several of them on this site.
The high point of our visit to Baikonour was watching the launch of three cosmonauts, two Russians and one French, in the Soyuz-TM15 spacecraft to the Mir space station.
Soyuz TM-15 crew report to State Commission immediately preceding launch
(click to enlarge)
Soyuz TM-15 launch, July 27, 1992 (click to enlarge)
Video of Soyuz TM-15 launch, July 27, 1992 (click to play)
To the left is a photo of me standing in front of a Proton rocket on its pad. The Proton is a heavy lift vehicle used, amongst many other things, to place modules of the Mir space station and the International Space Station in orbit.
We were allowed incredible access to the facilities in Baikonour. We were taken inside and under the pad that launches the Soviet space shuttle Energia-Buran (video file), then from there right up to the level where the cosmonauts enter the spacecraft.
Energia-Buran launch pad (click to enlarge)
Entrance to bunker below Energia-Buran launch pad We walked underneath in the flame pit and on top of the historic "Gagarin Pad" from which the first man in space, Yuri Gagarin, was launch on April 12th, 1961. This pad also launched the first artificial Earth satellite, Sputnik (MP3 file audio file), on October 4th, 1957, and thus began the space age, as well as the Soyuz TM-15 launch we witnessed. We toured a number of the buildings at Baikonour as well (see thumbnails below).
Gagarin Pad with Ken Harman on steps (click to enlarge)
Gagarin Pad flame pit (click to enlarge)
Inside the Soyuz Assembly Building with Soyuz TM-16 visible (click to enlarge)
Buran orbiter in storage (click to enlarge)
Inside the assembly building for the Energia Rocket (click to enlarge)
In the photo on the left I am relaxing on the runway in Baikonour on which the Buran space shuttle orbiter landed (video file) after its two orbit, unmanned flight in November of 1988. The Buran only flew in space that one time, and its huge carrier rocket, the Energia only one other time (May 1987). Shortly after developing this impressive capability the Soviet Union dissolved and Russia did not have the funding to carry on with this program. One of the impressions I came away with, especially after seeing the magnitude of the equipment for the Energia-Buran project, was that the Soviet Union had been a poor, almost third world country with a superpower's military and space program. Resource mis-allocation on this scale could only be possible in a totalitarian society.
We were back in the Moscow area three days after the launch of Soyuz TM-15 and were in the Russian mission control centre in the Moscow suburb of Korolev (named after the great Soviet chief designer of spacecraft and launch vehicles whose name was a top secret until his death in 1966) to see the Soyuz spacecraft dock with the Mir space station on a live television link.
Russian Mission Control Centre - TsUP ('soup') (click to enlarge)Next to the Russian mission control is the S.P. Korolev Space Corporation Energia Museum, which contains many historic exhibits, including the first manned spacecraft, Yuri Gagarin's Vostok re-entry module. This museum blew the minds of all of us, and is surely on a parr with the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC. However, unlike the crowds one typically finds at the NASM, the 24 of us were virtually the only people in the Energia Museum that day!
S.P. Korolev Space Corporation Energia Museum (click to enlarge)
Yuri Gagarin's Vostok spacecraft in Energia Museum (click to enlarge)While in the Moscow area, and before heading to St. Petersburg where our Russian tour ended, we also took in the Yuri Gagarin "Star City" Cosmonaut Training Centre, Monino Air Museum (Soviet Air Force), and the Khrunichev Plant where the Mir Space Station and Proton rockets are manufactured.
Proton Rocket first stage engines in the Khrunichev Plant (click to enlarge)
A couple of the other fellows on this trip have also developed websites that have information and photos on this trip. Ron Caswell, the author of the "Eyes on the Cape" series, has some great photos of this trip on his site, and the trip to French Guiana we made the following year. Chris Gainor has also written about our trip to Russia. There is also an extensive description of this trip on the site of "N-1" Ed Cameron , and there one can also learn much about the long secret Soviet effort to put a man on the moon from one of the acknowledged experts...Ed!
Click here to continue on to the second page which continues with descritions about my visits to various space centres around the world, while the third , fourth and fifth pages display some of my models of historic spacecraft and launch vehicles.
This page will change and evolve over time, so check back periodically. I welcome any questions or comments and can be contacted at:
Ken R. Harman last revision date: March 26, 2007
