As an enormous Superman fan, I’ve lengthy needed to personal Motion Comics No. 419, the problem revealed in 1972 with an iconic cowl exhibiting the Man of Metal hurtling into the sky, seeming to fly proper off the web page. That’s why, earlier this yr, I used to be delighted to lastly observe down a duplicate within the secondhand part of my native comedian store.
However I shortly found that this comedian has one other declare to fame. Inside its pages, Superman grew to become concerned in one of the vital vital chapters within the historical past of area science.
On the primary web page, reporter Clark Kent, Superman’s alter ego, covers the launch of a brand new NASA satellite tv for pc whereas onboard an area shuttle. “I’m in orbit with NASA’s Large Space Telescope, the LST. Here, well above the haze of our atmosphere, astronomers will get a crystal-clear view of the stars and planets,” Kent says within the comedian.
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Proper there on the web page was a lifeless ringer for the real-life Hubble House Telescope. I used to be baffled: How did the cartoon model of an area telescope that launched in 1990 get into a comic book revealed in 1972?
On the primary web page of Motion Comics No. 419, Superman visits the Giant House Telescope.
There was a clue within the story’s credit. Pete Simmons, then director of area astronomy at Grumman Aerospace Company (now Northrop Grumman), is credited with “technical assistance.” This was sufficient data for a Google search, which turned up a documentary clip from 1997.
What I discovered amazed me. The Giant House Telescope was Hubble. Whereas the undertaking was named after astronomer Edwin Hubble in 1983, NASA had been growing plans for what it known as a Giant House Telescope because the late Sixties. The company had efficiently launched its first profitable area telescope, the Orbiting Astronomical Observatory 2 (OAO-2), in 1968, and by 1971 it had begun to conduct feasibility research for a bigger instrument to look deeper into the cosmos.
However such an costly undertaking can be a tricky promote in Congress. Simmons, who had beforehand labored on the OAO-2, took on the problem of demonstrating to the general public—and to Congress—that the LST was a worthy scientific funding. Sooner or later Simmons was on a aircraft to New York Metropolis when he observed a toddler within the seat subsequent to him studying a Superman comedian, he recalled in an episode of the documentary sequence Individuals Close to Right here, produced by Mountain Lake PBS.
“I thought, ‘Gee, those are pretty popular,’” he mentioned within the documentary. He invited staff of DC Comics to the Grumman labs and confirmed them fashions of the LST, which satisfied them that they need to function the telescope in a Superman story. The end result was Motion Comics No. 419. The comedian offered properly, as Superman comics normally did, giving Simmons tangible proof of the American public’s curiosity within the LST that he might share with Congress.
“I went down to Washington, [D.C.]…, and we gave every member of Congress a copy of this Superman comic,” he recalled. “I remember asking as many as I could find…, ‘If I can get the Large Space Telescope talked about in Superman comics, would you think it’s popular enough…?’ Then I’d give them a copy of this issue.”
I wanted to know extra. My two nice pursuits—comedian books and area science—have been colliding. Might we actually have Superman to thank for all of the necessary discoveries and beautiful pictures made by the Hubble House Telescope?
Sadly, Simmons died in 2018. So I contacted Charles Robert O’Dell, an observational astronomer and lead scientist on the Giant House Telescope undertaking from 1972 to 1983.
O’Dell advised me that within the early days of the undertaking, the destiny of the LST was not solely within the fingers of Congress. Proponents additionally needed to persuade their fellow astronomers, a lot of whom would have most well-liked the cash be spent on Earth-based telescopes, that the LST was a worthy funding.
“We organized what we called ‘dog and pony shows’ of NASA engineers and managers,” he says. “[We] went to [Harvard University, the University of Chicago and the California Institute of Technology] and spoke at those places, proselytizing the LST. And this did sway people.”
However within the eyes of astronomers, Motion Comics No. 419 wasn’t precisely a promoting level for the LST. “In fact, it was a turnoff,” O’Dell says. “Remember how conservative astronomy was as a body at that time…. And so, seeing a comic—it was just an alien concept.”
To persuade Congress, O’Dell believes that the comedian would solely actually have been helpful within the fingers of a pure salesperson like Simmons. “[Simmons] would go in with this enormous salesman’s enthusiasm for the project and pull that comic out…. He could pull something like that off,” O’Dell says.
O’Dell can’t affirm how a lot affect the comedian had on Congress. And the telescope nonetheless had a tricky combat for funding forward. In 1974 and 1976 astronomers undertook campaigns to foyer assist for the undertaking in Congress. They despatched letters and telegrams and even made private visits to Capitol Hill.
In 1977 the legislature lastly authorised funding of the LST. 13 years later, below a brand new title, the Hubble House Telescope was launched. It has been working for greater than three many years, and it was the primary observatory to detect parts from the early universe, picture the floor of a star in addition to the solar and ensure the presence of supermassive black holes. And it owes its existence, I discovered, extra to the onerous work and keenness of individuals like O’Dell and Simmons than to any fictional superhero.
However one way or the other I believe Superman would favor it that approach.
