Date: June 27, 2011

Title: Snoopy the Space Beagle

Podcaster: Maurzio Morabito

Organization: Omnologos Ltd

Description: Once upon a time there was just a comic strip dog. Now there’s a pilot, an astronaut, a safety award. And a lunar module in solar orbit.

Bio: Maurizio is an experienced electronics and computing technologist and scientist, and published journalist and technical and scientific author in English and Italian with a variety of interests, including the study of international relations, economic and social development factors, the energy sector and space technologies. Maurizio has recently been accepted as Fellow of the British Interplanetary Society, the world’s longest established organization devoted solely to supporting and promoting the exploration of space and astronautics.

Sponsor: Today’s podcast is sponsored by Omnologos Ltd, on its quest to find sponsors for a major scientific experiment on the International Space Station. And it is dedicated to Lorenzo: may you take me to the Moon, one day!

Transcript:

Hello and welcome to another podcast by Omnologos. My name is Maurizio Morabito. This is the space story of Snoopy. Snoopy: the first and so far only Beagle on the Moon. Also, the first and only Peanuts character dreaming, acting, pretending to and behaving like a pilot. A pilot just as unbounded as his fantasy, and it’s only too appropriate that the story of Snoopy is continuing to this day. In solar orbit.

The story of Snoopy the Beagle starts on October 4, 1950, that is just two days after the Peanuts strip had started. Apparently, it was common at the time for dogs to play with children from a neighboroughood. Snoopy became more and more human-like, and started acting out fantasies such as being a different kind of animal, for example a snake. Charles Schultz had this idea, of suburban dogs living a dreary life where nothing would ever happen, and as a reaction to that Snoopy would be drawn as roaming free from his real-life obvious limitations, becoming an attorney, or a member of the Foreign Legion.

On October 10, 1965, then, Snoopy took to the skies with his doghouse suddenly becoming a British World War 1 biplane fighter. Goggles on, flying helmet on, scarf on, the Flying Ace started having aerial fights with the famous Red Baron, the ace-of-aces of first world war, winner of more than 80 air combats.

This let Snoopy finally and absolutely free. Notably, he was alone most of the time, risking his life and his paw for the glory, sometimes coming back home with a doghouse riddled by the Red Baron’s bullets. This evolution made the character more popular than ever, and to this day there are at least two video games featuring Snoopy the Flying Ace. And a 1966 song. And countless merchandise.

The third stage of Snoopy’s space story starts with the Apollo 1 tragedy, in January 1967. Inspired by Smokey the Bear, the mascot of the US Forest Service, NASA decided to contact Charles Schultz to use Snoopy for a new safety campaign and award. The exact reason might be a matter of debate, but surely didn’t hurt the fact that Snoopy was a pilot himself by then, and had demonstrated time and again his determination in refusing to accept defeat.

The Flying Beagle, in the shape of the Silver Snoopy Award Pin, is still presented to people that distinguish themselves in the area of spaceflight safety.

But if NASA had gone to Snoopy, Snoopy didn’t stop at NASA. On May 18, 1969, he left Earth. Well, of course the Peanuts strip didn’t suddenly find itself dog-less. What happened is that Apollo 10 departed to the Moon, the last mission not designed to land (the closest point was a little more than 14 thousand feet). Perhaps because it would be “snooping” our natural satellite, perhaps because Snoopy had become a symbol of excellence as said by Apollo 10 Commander Tom Stafford, or for whatever other reason, Apollo 10’s Lunar Module (LM-4) was indeed called “Snoopy” (the Command Module, of course, received the callsign of “Charlie Brown”). This was MORE profound than it looks. For example there is a picture of Stafford patting a stuffed Snoopy on the nose. In another, Command Module Pilot John Young holds Snoopy after a news conference. An image of Charlie Brown flew to Moon orbit and back. And so on and so forth. One way the flight is still commemorated, is the 5-foot-tall statue of Snoopy at Florida’s Kennedy Space Center.

Meanwhile back on Earth Schultz prepared some special strips for the mission. In one of them, Snoopy is flying to the Moon using a fish bowl in place of a space helmet. In another, that’s the one for March 14, 1969, the flying beagle is actually on the moon, all excited having beaten “the Russians”, “everybody” and “that stupid cat who lives next door”.

Again for reasons by now almost entirely lost, the fate of Snoopy the Lunar Module has been very peculiar. The lower half of it, the descent stage (BTW, only half-loaded to prevent the astronauts from actually landing ahead of Apollo 11), was directed to impact the Moon. But the ascent stage was launched in solar orbit. In fact, “Snoopy” is the only surviving flown LM ascent stage.

On May 23, 1969, Snoopy became the first and so far only spacecraft to leave Moon orbit to enter solar orbit. Unfortunately, it has only been officially tracked for 8 hours after its final engine burn, but space enthusiast Diane Neisus has computed its most likely orbit, taking it as far from Earth as 300 million km. “Snoopy” is therefore up to now is farthest out in space of all (former) manned spacecraft. Apollo 10 and Apollo 12 share the record of the biggest number of real flight hardware objects left over by any of the Apollo missions. There are three, Apollo 10′s are LM “Snoopy”, CM “Charlie Brown” at the Science Museum in London, and the third stage S-IVB 505 in solar orbit.

And so Snoopy is, most likely and most appropriately, in all likelihood still flying. Its designation is 1969-43D. It is really fascinating to think there is this piece of late-1960′s Apollo hardware flying around the solar system, awaiting for the day when we’ll finally go out and return it home. But collecting it back won’t be easy. First we’ll need to find its location, most likely in some kind of very chaotic orbital arrangement with the Sun, the Earth and the Moon. There is even a remote but non-zero chance Snoopy has crashed on the Moon since.

Perhaps we’ll first have to wait for a future stage in the search for neo’s, near earth objects, when the surveys will go down to monitor objects of Snoopy’s size, 9ft by 14ft by 13ft. Docking with it will be yet another technological channel. And its conditions will be hardly pristine, maybe affected by explosions of some of its parts.

No matter, as the salvage of parts of the Titanic has shown, whatever we’ll find will be a great find. Just be careful what you touch…astronaut John Young is on record stating that some..ahem..some solid waste has been left in the standard plastic bags inside Snoopy. Frozen solid by now, perhaps not the best selling souvenir on eBay in 2111.

I have collected a series of links of sources for this podcast, and they are included in the transcript.

http://365daysofastronomy.org/2009/07/20/july-20th-the-eagle-has-landed/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Lunar_Module
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snoopy
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?PHPSESSID=8ba432577de3cab9de65983e8c036939&topic=22121.0;all
http://omnologos.wordpress.com/2008/10/02/snoopy-the-apollo-lunar-module-awaiting-collection/
http://www.apollomaniacs.com/apollo/indexe.htm
http://www.astroengine.com/2009/01/in-a-picture-snoopys-apollo-10/
http://www.bautforum.com/archive/index.php/t-6186.html
http://www.check-six.com/lib/Snoopy.htm
http://www.collectspace.com/ubb/Forum29/HTML/001171.html
http://www.diane-neisius.de/download/celestia_apollo10_README.txt
http://www.footnote.com/spotlight/18187/snoopy_apollo_10_mascot/
http://www.planet4589.org/space/logs/deep/hco
http://www.schulzmuseum.org/exhibits/2009/nasa/index.html
http://www.schulzmuseum.org/pressreleases/20080829.html
http://www.space.com/6700-snoopy-celebrates-40th-anniversary-moon-flight.html
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=5666&st=15&start=15

This is a podcast by Omnologos. Godspeed, Snoopy. And thank you all for listening.

End of podcast:

365 Days of Astronomy
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