{"id":1591,"date":"2024-07-21T08:37:51","date_gmt":"2024-07-21T08:37:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pridemagazines.co.uk\/lincolnshire\/?p=1591"},"modified":"2024-07-21T08:37:51","modified_gmt":"2024-07-21T08:37:51","slug":"a-summer-of-discovery-with-tim-peake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pridemagazines.co.uk\/lincolnshire\/highlights\/a-summer-of-discovery-with-tim-peake\/07-2024","title":{"rendered":"A Summer of Discovery with Tim Peake"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Tim Peake, a special friend of Grantham\u2019s Woolsthorpe Manor \u2013 the childhood home of polymath Sir Isaac Newton \u2013 recently helped to launch the National Trust\u2019s Summer of Discovery. 70 adults and children joined the astronaut for a morning of space and science<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t<\/svg>\n\t\t<\/button>
Woolsthorpe Manor, Tim Peake and the Summer of Discovery<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\ufeffAn out of the world experience recently, as an audience of 70 gathered at Woolsthorpe Manor near Grantham to spend a morning with Major Tim Peake, the British ESA astronaut, Army Air Corps officer and latterly space celebrity, author of eight books on the subject.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tim was launching the National Trust\u2019s Summer of Discovery programme which aims to use science and history to inspire families to find out more about the world\u2019s greatest scientists… and they don\u2019t come much greater than Woolsthorpe\u2019s most famous resident, Sir Isaac Newton.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2008think this is my third or fourth visit,\u201d said Tim during an exclusive interview with Lincolnshire Pride after the event. \u201cIt\u2019s always such an inspiring place to come to, the childhood home of Sir Isaac Newton. And to meet with young people, as we have today, is great fun. Adults and children are broadly interested in the same aspects of space but everyone gets inspired by the subject.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe last time I visited Woolsthorpe Manor was to plant an apple tree sapling that had been cultivated from a space-flown seed from the tree within the grounds here, so that was very special.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The morning began with a talk in which Tim described first hand the experience of going into space, and living on board the ISS from December 2015 to June 2016. During his time, he received messages of support from HM Queen Elizabeth II and Elton John. Tim also ran the London Marathon from space on the ISS\u2008treadmill, and he broadcast a New Year\u2019s Eve message from space… first though, he had to actually get there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOne of the things you expect when you\u2019re in orbit is how peaceful\u00a0it is. The space station does have thrusters \u2013 it needs them for if it has to move, but that\u2019s only on rare occasions. Most of the time the station is obeying Newton\u2019s laws and remaining peacefully in orbit, so there\u2019s no noise coming from any engine and no vibrations.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBut to get there it\u2019s not so peaceful. You have to strap yourself into a Soyuz rocket. It takes three people, but you\u2019re crammed in, so its very claustrophobic when the hatch is shut on top of you. And if everything goes to plan with our checks, there\u2019s about 40 minutes of time built-in as a buffer so you\u2019ve that time to just sit there and wait, on top of about 300 tonnes of explosive rocket fuel.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA\u2008thousand things can happen at that moment, but only one of them is good. But when the rocket does finally launch, it\u2019s like the world\u2019s best roller coaster. It has nine million horsepower, it accelerates at the same pace as a Formula One car, and that gives you about 4g of acceleration for several minutes with nothing to do but focus on your breathing, as we had to during training to build up our tolerance.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOn the way up, the protective fairings disappear and you can see out of the windows for the first time, as the blackness of space approaches. That lasts for about four minutes and then you\u2019re in space, having gone from being vertical to a horizontal orientation, in orbit, cheating orbit to exactly match the curvature of the Earth.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat means you\u2019re travelling about 17,500mph, which is ten times the speed of a bullet, 25 times the speed of sound. When the engine finally cuts out, everything becomes very beautiful and that\u2019s when we float up and experience weightlessness for the first time.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tim went on to explain how he \u2018didn\u2019t do particularly well\u2019 at school and but felt inspired and determined watching the Space Shuttle-era of space flight and seeing people like Helen Sharman, the first British woman in space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Joining the Army as a military pilot, Tim discovered he loved the feeling of flying, and became determined to specialise in becoming not only a pilot, but a test pilot too, across a number of aircraft including the Apache helicopter in which he spent over a decade. Tim joined\u00a0the ESA in 2008 after seeing an advert online, \u2018astronauts wanted.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c8,500 people were applying too,\u201d says Tim. \u201cBut just recently I was on the other side of the table, selecting candidates, and this time there were over 22,500 so it\u2019s amazing to see how much interest a career in space has increased.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe first day of testing is all about hard skills but then for the rest\u00a0of the year during the selection process it\u2019s about soft skills. That\u2019s what space agencies are most concerned about; your personality, your character, leadership, teamwork and your communication skills.\u00a0So whenever I go around to talk at schools and colleges, I\u2008really to try to impart how important it is to have a balance of both.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Resilience, too, is an important quality. Tim recalls the hours he spent in the simulators and constantly being told \u2018you\u2019re dead, you\u2019ve died, you\u2019re dying again…\u2019 but then, he says, gradually you stop dying and stop failing even when instructors are throwing different scenarios and problems at you and other trainees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCrammed together as an international crew, you need to get\u00a0on well with each other. We\u2019re put under stress and pressure as we train. They make us hungry and tired and grumpy, in environments from caves underground to underwater habitats.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe ISS\u2008is home for six months and I think it\u2019s the greatest ever feat of human engineering, 400 tonnes of hardware, the size of a football pitch, over our head right now, 400km up there, going around the planet 16 times a day. The most humbling experience, though is <\/p>\n\n\n\n

the thin \u2013 very, very thin \u2013 16km of atmosphere, which is all that\u2019s protecting every single living thing on Earth. Without it, we\u2019re no different from Mars or from Venus. Suddenly you become aware that we have to look after that thin strip of gas and treasure it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSometimes people question why we\u2019re investing the time and finance in exploring space. It\u2019s because it holds the answer to so many problems that we face down here today. Lots of solutions that we find will be found in space. In an environment without gravity we\u2019re able to grow very large, very pure protein crystals which aids in the search for a treatment for conditions like Parkinson\u2019s and motor-neurone disease. In space we\u2019re also using 3D printer with bio-ink to \u2018print out\u2019 organs like the heart or cartilage, so this is the potential future for medicine. You can do that in space, without gravity, but not down here on earth, so we\u2019re doing some amazing science up there.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe modern commercialisation of space and making it more sustainable, establishing geopolitical precedents is where we are now. We\u2019re no longer in the era of Apollo or Saturn, so a rocket that\u2019s just 1% reusable is no good. We\u2019re now ensuring we\u2019ve rockets that are 90% reusable.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Summer of Discovery is about inspiring young people to think about space as a career, about science and about technology and engineering. Getting young people out of the classroom and allowing them to put science into practice whilst having fun along the way is really important.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a way of inspiring curiosity and creativity in young people with interactive experiments inspired by Newton himself, from interactive experiments which will include a pendulum, a telescope, Newton\u2019s cradles, a tower drop and air-powered rocket toys, all on top of Woolsthorpe Manor\u2019s existing Science Centre activities. All of these are aimed at celebrating the work and life of Sir Isaac Newton and the fact that his life in science began not when he was a grey-haired old man, but when he was a curious young boy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Woolsthorpe Manor\u2019s Summer of Discovery, will be running from 12th July until September at the National Trust\u2019s Woolsthorpe Manor near Grantham, see www.nationaltrust.org.uk.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tim Peake, a special friend of Grantham\u2019s Woolsthorpe Manor \u2013 the childhood home of polymath Sir Isaac Newton \u2013 recently…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1592,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[486,117,488,485,484,487],"class_list":["post-1591","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-highlights","tag-astronaut","tag-national-trust","tag-newton","tag-space","tag-tim-peake","tag-woolsthorpe"],"acf":false,"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pridemagazines.co.uk\/lincolnshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1591","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pridemagazines.co.uk\/lincolnshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pridemagazines.co.uk\/lincolnshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pridemagazines.co.uk\/lincolnshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pridemagazines.co.uk\/lincolnshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1591"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.pridemagazines.co.uk\/lincolnshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1591\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1595,"href":"https:\/\/www.pridemagazines.co.uk\/lincolnshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1591\/revisions\/1595"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pridemagazines.co.uk\/lincolnshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1592"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pridemagazines.co.uk\/lincolnshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pridemagazines.co.uk\/lincolnshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pridemagazines.co.uk\/lincolnshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}