The Hindenburg

“Oh the humanity!” Those were the words made famous that are cried over the images of the Hindenburg airship going up in flames. The year was 1937 and the location was Manchester Township in New jersey. The Hindenberg was a German commercial passenger-carrying rigid airship. In common terms it was a big ass blimp, but aviation enthusiasts will quickly and sternly correct you. It was the largest in its class and was a glamours and novel way for the super-rich world travelers of the day to make it from one continent to another. “First class on the red star line, charming I’m sure but we’ll be taking the airship.” You can almost hear the aristocratic tone in their voice. It must have been something to see since commercial airplanes were only just becoming a thing.

Disaster struck when the massive envelope of hydrogen gas (which is what a rigid airship is when you break it all down) caught fire during its attempt to dock with its mooring at Naval Air Station Lakehurst. Hydrogen, if you did not know, is very combustible. That is to say explosive. Ya know, like when dad put too much lighter fluid on the charcoal barbeque and then lit a match? Like that, only much, much faster, hotter, and louder. Once the envelope was punctured and a spark hit the gas charged air it was all over in an instant. A total of 13 passengers and 22 crewman and one person on the ground lost their lives in the accident. Surprisingly 62 other people on board survived. How is beyond understanding.

Because of the novelty and scale of this style of travel, there was a newsreel crew on the ground to record the arrival of the vessel. Herbert Morrison was reporting live on the radio, and he is the one who uttered those fateful words “oh the humanity!” You can hear the agony in his voice as the scale of the disaster unfolded. It was a horrific accident and singled the start of the end of hydrogen-based air travel.

You’ve seen the visuals and heard the audio. If you’re old enough to be reading this story then you’ve had the Hindenburg experience, it’s that ubiquitous. Somehow with time, all wounds heal, and the tragedy is often used as a punch line to something going disastrously wrong. It’s convenient that it’s one of those disasters that passes the “too soon?” test. At this point almost anyone who was alive and impacted by the trauma is no longer here, and in many cases nor is their lineage. So, we have all deemed it socially acceptable to use the incident as a punch line. It would seem it’s not “too soon” for most of us. Let’s put a pin in this as we’re going to come back to it in a bit.

My journey into the museum field started when I was a very small child. I grew up in Portland, Oregon but one set of my grandparents lived in the bay area. When I was six years old my dad took two weeks off in the summer so we could go down to visit them. It was a big deal! It was also a road trip. Before the sun dared to show its first rays in the morning dawn, Dad packed my mother, brother and a very car-sick prone dog all up in our Ford Pinto station wagon and we headed west.

That’s right….for those geography buffs out there you’re thinking “isn’t San Francisco south of Portland?” Yes, yes it is. But my father decided that a proper road trip was needed and that meant taking highway 101 from Astoria at the mouth of the Columbia River all the way down the Oregon and Northern California coastline. A 12-hour car ride on I-5 just became a 3-day sojourn on the pacific coast highway.

Of course, it wasn’t all bad. We camped at state parks on the beach, we ate things we weren’t normally allowed, and according to my mother’s meticulous record keeping, my brother and I went 87 minutes straight without fighting. A record that holds to this day!

This is where my first memories of museums begin. There was not a historic marker, scenic loop or wide spot on the road that my father skipped. We stood in the footsteps of Lewis and Clark, posed with our hands shading our eyes as we scanned the horizon. We weaved some reed baskets at the Clatsop Nation interpretive center. And most notably for me anyway, we descended into a coastal cave where we witnessed the largest, smelliest, and most fascinating collection of Stellar Sea Lions. That last one was such an accomplishment that upon our departure we slapped a giant yellow bumper sticker on our Pinto declaring to all that we had “Survived Sea Lion Caves!”

Attending museums and informal learning experiences would become a hallmark of my upbringing. A school field trip to our local zoo each spring would mark the assentation of a grade at my elementary school. An evening at our county’s historical society meant the acquisition of another rank in cub scouts or a merit badge as a boy scout a few years later. And of course, my family’s frequent visits to an enormous science center in my hometown were so frequent that I began to assume that we were part owners of the place.

It wasn’t until my teenage years that I became aware that a job working in a museum was something people could do. I discovered this as I was watching a movie. In an effort to asswage his two restless sons, my father finally broke down and got cable…with HBO! Young people, ask you parents what I mean when I say cable. There was a time before wireless and it…was…GLORIOUS!

So there I sat watching my favorite archeologist/professor who was lashed to the mast of a steam ship pitching in the waves of a storm while the fedora glad villain slapped him around. In one of the most dramatic cinematic moments in all of film, our good guy whose name is Dr. Indiana Jones, slowly lifts his head, blood dripping from his split lip and looks the bady in the eyes and declares “that belongs in a museum!”

I leapt off the couch and yelled “Damn right Indy!” That was a big moment for me for two reasons. One, it was the first time I swore in front of my mother and as I suspected it would be the last for about the next three decades. But it was also a defining moment because this is when I learned that there were people whose job it was to travel the world with a bull whip, revolver, and leather jacket to gather and protect humanities history and artifacts to put in the museums I was visiting.

Now before we go any further, I want to assure you that teenaged me was fully aware that Dr. Indiana Jones was a fictional character played by an actor named Han Solo. I’m not dumb. But the seed was planted. The idea that I could possibly have a career in informal education and wander the halls of museums and get paid doing it overtook my other and more obvious career trajectory of joining the ranks of major league baseball.

But how? There was no career fair for museums. My guidance counselor in high school was more concerned with my ability to graduate than the possibility of greater academic pursuits. I didn’t even know anybody who worked in a museum to tell me how the magic trick worked of getting one of these coveted jobs. What I did have was a volunteer requirement before I could graduate high school and a science center with a teen volunteer program. And so, the journey of a thousand miles began with this first step.

Entrance into the hallowed ranks of the teen volunteer docent program at my local science center consisted of a rigorous entrance exam that included filling out a form and getting my parents to write a check for $25 for my uniform and lanyard. Again, younger readers, ask your parents what a check book is and how we used to use these for currency. Once these steps were completed, my career as a museum professional had begun!

After successful completion in the volunteer program, and more notably my graduation from high school, my museum career took its next step forward…camp counselor. Oh, the power! I sat upon the throne of awesomeness with dominion over my charges. Even though my frontal cortex was not yet fully developed, my betters had deemed me worthy of overseeing 24 young souls and to impart knowledge on the blank slates of their minds. In retrospect it’s possible that some of said knowledge imparted may have had some factual errors. I will spend the balance of my life trying to correct those wrongs, but that’s not what this story is about so let’s move on.

To the utter surprise of my high school guidance counselor, and I’m willing to bet several others in my orbit at the time, I did indeed gain access to the halls of higher education and began my college career in the pursuit of degree(s) that would advance my plans to stay in the museum profession. I would go on to become a bonified educator and museum administrator. A fedora, bull whip and leather jacket were within my grasp!

The next 17 years read like so many stories from my museum colleagues. One battlefield commission after another I rose in the ranks from part time educator to full time senior leadership. For the past 15 years I have enjoyed the incredible pleasure of leading different museums. While it has been said before, I owe a great debt to those who went before me and who gave me opportunities to grow and contribute at every step of my museum career.

The first giant whose shoulders I stood on was a young department director who hired me into my first full time role at the science museum. I had spent the first few years of my museum career piecing together a series of part time and special project assignments to earn enough money to avoid seeking a real job and having to work for a living. But this model was not sustainable and a job at a local elementary school was calling. It was time to secure a full-time position at the museum with benefits or head out for the hallowed halls of fourth grade academia. The department head in question was a few years older than me, but she was much wiser, and much more experienced at managing people and programs. I had applied for a highly coveted position at the museum, a traveling science teacher, and she had the final say.

My interview went well until a curve ball at the end. Throughout the interview, behind me and over in the corner was a table with a bunch of items on it, but the view was obstructed because there was a blanket covering everything. After answering all the interview questions, I was informed that the panel would be leaving the room for 5 minutes. Under the blanket were a bunch of random items and I needed to prepare a brief lesson to present to the panel upon their return. Oh yeah, one more thing, the panel will be behaving like a bunch of elementary school kids. WHAT?

I scrambled and threw back the blanket. They weren’t kidding, there was a bunch of random materials on the table. Fortunately, there was enough there for me to scrape together some quick lesson on Newton’s third law which reads “for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.” The panel reconvened and the lesson was delivered. These guys were good at channeling their inner child and to date this was my most stressful interview.  But I passed and was bestowed with the title of Outreach Educator.

What this meant was that after two weeks of learning three different assemblies, about a dozen one-hour classroom programs, and how to both inflate and operate a portable planetarium I was handed the keys to a 1984 Ford Econoline van, a printed schedule, a map, a company credit card and I left the nest to deliver science programing to waiting schools and communities across the land. If Woody Guthrie were alive, I’m sure he would have composed a memorable folk song about the traveling science teacher.

The outreach program that I was working in was one of the oldest of its kind in the nation and started in the mid-seventies when our museum was in a different building. By the time I had joined the ranks we were already a few decades into serving our region and programs like ours had sprouted up all over the country at other large science centers. Oregon is a big state, but our program wasn’t limited to our borders. We also traveled to Washington, California, Idaho, Northern Nevada, Montana, and even Alaska. It was a great job for young idealistic educators. A nomadic lifestyle, traveling from one town to the next. Returning home every few weeks to resupply and rest up before hitting the road again. However, if you’re newly married with a young kid at home you’re not long for the job. Eventually that same great giant who hired me into this job hired me into another that kept me chained to the museum and eventually overseeing this very program.

My traveling science teacher days may not have been decades long, but I did pack a lot of experiences and learning into that time of my career. The great thing about working in a hands-on learning environment is that you get to be hands on too. One of the best ways that I have found to teach young scientific minds is to lead by example. That means every time we did a project with the kids, I too made or did that same project. At first it would just be a more polished versions of the same things the kids were making or doing. But with time I would get bored of making the same simple machine or the same colored slime, so I would kick it up a notch. It’s not hard for a grown man with a college degree to out build a second grader making a bridge with straws and masking tape. My mastery of making a circuit let me draw circles around fifth graders making scribble machines. And my rockets, Lord have mercy on the kid who wanted to give me a run for my money.

Model rockets was a passion I developed in middle school because what better way to draw the attention of the ladies and the admiration of middle school ball players who were 18 months ahead of you in puberty than through the impressive hobby of model rocketry. I left my seventh-grade peers in the dust, literally and figuratively when I advanced through the Estes model rocket catalog. Single stage A rocket motors were for chumps. The day I showed up on the football field to launch my four-foot-tall scale model of the Saturn Five rocket with three stages of D rocket motors no one stood a chance. I was immediately elected president of the model rocket club and the rest as they say is history.

Fast forward a decade and change and I was teaching a group of kids in an afterschool program, one of our many outreach offerings and one that afforded me a cross-town vs. cross-state commute. Our theme for the week was a curriculum called “3-2-1 Blast Off!” Can you guess the subject matter? If you guessed the history of manned space flight, you are correct. One of the many activities we did that week was to build simple one stage model rockets from kits. A little bit of work each day that culminated with a launch at the end of the week. When I work with kids and rockets the very first lesson I teach them is the first rule of rocketry: “Never form an emotional attachment to your rocket!”

Some of these rockets were going to fail to launch and meet a fiery end on the launch pad. Others would gain some altitude before losing structural integrity and their trajectory would become horribly miss guided. Still others would have a successful flight, but when the blasting charge went off to push out the nose cone and deploy the parachute, an internal explosion will occur, jettisoning the rocket motor out the back and the rocket returning to Earth as a glorified lawn dart. The successful engineers in the group would get as far as a solid flight and deployment of the parachute but would have miscalculated the winds and watch their rocket glide away to another county or at least to a neighbor’s roof top. I would venture to say that less than 10% would have a full flight and recovery process, thus the first rule of rocketry, “never form an emotional attachment to your rocket,” because the odds are you will soon be separated from your rocket.

After all the students had launched (or tried to launch), and half were left shattered and crying because they broke the first rule of rocketry and fell in love with their rocket and thought they would be the one to defy the odds, I would bring out my rocket(s). The first looks just like the ones they built, only the fins are perfectly aligned, the paint job is much cleaner, and the decals are perfect. I take this moment to point all this out to them and mention the lesson that because I paid attention to the details, I had a superior rocket, so maybe stop crying and watch how awesome this is going to be. Then I slipped a C rocket into the motor tube and set it up for launch. Is this a dirty trick? Maybe, but kids are easy to lie to and also impress so leave me alone. Together we say the magic words, “3…2…1…BLAST OFF.” With a mighty whoosh my C motor takes this tiny little rocket into the atmosphere and disappears from sight. I take this moment to drink in all the slack jawed faces. Mission achieved, lessons learned, admiration delivered.

Because I have been rocketeering for half my life and this aint my first rodeo, I have properly angled the launch rod into the wind and after about a minute I start to hear the murmuring of the assembled crowd. “Look, I see it!” All those young bendy necks look up into the cloudy sky and can just make out the bright orange recovery parachute of my rocket. The kids begin to vector in the landing spot and take off running, each wanting to be the first to recover and return the masterful example of engineering. I let them run because I need time to load up the Saturn V. They’re going to soil themselves when they see this baby go.

This kind of one-upmanship would continue with every group of kids I worked with. I built taller Lego towers, my newspaper boats floated longer and held more cargo, and my liquid nitrogen ice-cream deserved a Michelin star. Beating kids at stuff was super easy and so much fun, you should try it if you’re not currently doing it! Once, I even built a cross bow. Now hold on, I know what you’re thinking and no, I was not teaching kids how to build medieval weapons. As part of an open build engineering class with middle schoolers, they got to choose and build their own project. One kid was deep into his build before I realized what he was doing. What he told me he was making was just a rouse to buy time to build a scary good cross bow. Once I knew what was what I did the responsible adult thing and confiscated the weapon and redirected his efforts to something more in the spirit of the class.

Upon returning to the barn (the building our Outreach program was headquartered in) I was unpacking the van and restocking our supplies when I came across the unfinished project and showed one of my fellow traveling educators. “Get a load of this thing,” I said and passed it around for others to see. They were impressed with the design and how far into the build this kid got. Then one of them asked how he got that far without me noticing and I quickly changed the subject. But I was impressed and felt this young budding engineer deserved to have his project completed. So that’s what I did. Over the next few weeks as time allowed, I would tinker with his work until I had mastered the trigger mechanism and was convinced I had a finished product.

Only one way to know for sure. I had to test it out. I loaded a bolt (that’s crossbow language for a small stubby arrow), set up a cardboard box as my target, took aim and pulled the trigger. The test was successful as the bolt penetrated the cardboard box, but also the wall behind the target! I had created a lethal weapon and just fired it off in the workplace. It was both impressive and terrifying. It was time to put the crossbow aside and best not to demonstrate its effectiveness or discuss it with my peers. Just tuck this lesson away for myself and keep a closer eye on open build projects with middle schoolers.

The traveling science teacher has to be the preverbal Jack of all trades. You had to be classroom teacher, supply clerk, van driver, and showman. This last one pertains to the three different assemblies we had to perform on a regular basis. These assemblies typically, though not exclusively, took place in school gymnasiums and cafeterias. My favorite one to do was an assembly called “Reacto Blast.” Things both reacted and blasted in this assembly. The grand finale of the show included the ignition of multiple hydrogen filled balloons. This was accomplished by having said balloons tethered on a string well above our heads, and after donning all the appropriate safety gear, handing a lit candle that was taped to the end of a yard stick to one lucky volunteer and guiding them in to the bottom of the balloon where upon the gas inside would ignite and a giant explosion and fire ball would become the focal point in the room. Kind of like a mini version of what happen with the Hindenburg. Hold on, don’t pull that pin just yet.

This demonstration always received the right response from the audience. Shrieks, giggles, ohs and ahs. Without fail, blowing stuff up is always a crowd pleaser. Despite the awesome display of physics and chemistry, it is actually pretty safe to do if you follow the training and safety protocols. In fact, to this day there has never been an accident involving blowing up hydrogen balloons by science museum educators (please pause and knock on wood as you complete that sentence). That’s not because I didn’t try.

Part of the thing that makes this experiment super safe is that the gas in question, in this case hydrogen, is transported in compressed cylinders. Think of the tank on the back of a scuba diver and then double the size. That tank is strapped to a dedicated hand truck, and it has a steel cap that screws on tight during transport. You would have to strike the cylinder with an armor piercing bullet before calamity strikes, and even then, probably not. The issue is that the whole apparatus weighs a ton and it’s a pain to secure it in the van, travel to your destination, take it out, wheel it into the gymnasium, fill your balloons, and then reverse the process to go home. It’s a lot for a two-minute demonstration.

I like to think of myself as a work smarter not harder kind of fellow so one day when doing my favorite assembly at a school not far from the museum, I decided there was a better way to do this. Rather than transport an entire cylinder across town, why not fill up the balloons at the barn, put them in the van and save a few steps. Here is why that idea doesn’t work. The back of a 1984 Ford Econoline van is great for transporting carts full of stuff. But it has lots of rough right angles, exposed ribs, sheet metal screws from the rooftop vent, etc. Basically, it’s an incredibly hostile environment to latex balloons filled with compressed gases. By the time I arrived at the school all my balloons had popped. I was a bit shell-shocked from my drive over with all the popping of balloons right behind my head and I had nothing with which to react or blast.

Did I learn my lesson? In a matter of speaking, yes. The next in-town assembly I pulled the same trick. Only this time I accounted for loss and filled plenty of extras. When I arrived at the school I looked like a guy at the carnival selling balloons. There would be lots of reacting and blasting today!

This routine continued for a while though none of my peers followed my methodology. Sometimes it takes time to follow a visionary. I did have one challenge that has plagued my entire science teaching career. I’ve never been particularly good at tying knots. Shhh, don’t tell the Scouts or they will take away my Eagle badge. This meant that on some regularity I would lose one of the balloons in the barn while trying to attach its tethered string. Said balloon would quickly float to the rafters high out of reach and stay there for a surprising amount of time. No big deal if they were helium balloons, but these were filled with hydrogen and slowly accumulating in a rigid envelope called a roof. The suggestion was made that I find a way to pop the balloons before I accumulated enough dangerous gas to blow up the building.

The argument was sound. The only real challenge was how to reach the balloons. The ceiling was beyond the reach of any available ladder and asking the facilities guys for the scissor lift was out of the question. The chances of them ratting me out to the authorities was too high of a risk. If only there was a device capable of…shooting them down? Lucky for me, the crossbow and bolts were still in the building. This would be both effective AND entertaining.

I quickly secured my equipment and loaded my first bolt. I had enlisted a trusted colleague who really wanted to see how this would turn out to serve as lookout. I took aim at the ceiling and let fly the dogs of war. You know the term “right tool for the right job?” Well, I was the tool, and this was the job. My first shot found it’s mark and pop went the balloon. No harm, no foul, five more balloons to go. Bonus, my bolt simply bounced off the ceiling and came clattering down. Reload and fire again. Pop, two bogies down, four more to go.

We, the accomplice and I, were having a good laugh. Crisis was being averted and my system was proving to be foolproof. Then genius struck. Popping the balloons was all fine and good, but wasn’t the gas still floating up there, pooling in the rafters? That sounded like a plausible scientific explanation. So really, I hadn’t yet fully resolved the risk of having a large volume of highly combustible gas from collecting inside a rigid envelope. When we did this experiment with KIDS, we ignited the gas. Why not do the same thing here? A yard stick with a candle wasn’t going to cut it, the gap was too far. But I already had a way to reach the balloons. Seems to me I remember seeing some images of medieval sieges on castles that involved arrows that had been tipped with fire. I couldn’t remember the same of crossbows, but I was sure the same principle held.

After rummaging around our supply room, I found a can of Sterno. Basically, it’s cooking fuel oil that has been turned into a kind of jelly. A quick dip of the tip of the bolt in the cooking jelly and I had a flaming arrow cocked and loaded. I took aim which became a bit trickier looking down my sights only to find a flame burning less than two feet from my eyeballs. Never mind, balloons are big and I nailed the last two shots so I’m basically a crossbow sniper at this point in my career. I steadied my shot and squeezed the trigger to let fly my flaming bolt.

Every so often you have one of those cartoon moments in your life where everything slows down right before something bad happens. Your highly evolved brain suddenly awakens from the nap it’s been taking only to discover the caveman brain who had the watch while it was sleeping has gone and done something really dumb. This was that moment for me. There is no stopping a crossbow once it is set in motion. There is no Matrix moment where I can bend space and time and keep my expertly aimed bolt from finding the target. The only thing now was to sit back and watch Sir Isaac Newton’s third law take effect. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

The bolt found it’s mark and my hypothesis held. It did indeed ignite balloon number three…and four…and five…and six. I believe science calls this a chain reaction. Turns out if you have four very full balloons filled with hydrogen gas in close proximity, you only need to ignite the one in order to ignite them all. Also, any fear that I had that the gas from balloons one and two were pooled up in the rafters was all gone because there’s not a chance they didn’t join in the fun of the roiling fire ball I had just set off. And then there was the deafening boom. I hadn’t considered the full effect of igniting six hydrogen balloon’s worth of gas all at once. When we do one, in a gymnasium, wearing ear protection and having the audience covering their ears, it’s quite loud. Six in what amounts to an industrial garage or metal barn? It’s much, much louder.

After the shockwave I was presented with a new and potentially much scarier dilemma. While my first two bolts had popped the balloons and then clattered to the ground, my third shot fired was truer to the target and imbedded itself in the ceiling. You remember this is the bolt that was covered in burning jelly. My foolproof plan had found its fool. I stood there staring at the ceiling that was scorched from six hydrogen balloons and in the middle of that was now a burning arrow. My lookout looked at me with horror in his eyes. He was trying to figure out if we were going to share a cell together after our arson conviction or if he should immediately report me to the authorities, any authority would due at this point.

Fortunately for us I had fired into fireproof insulation and the flames we were witnessing was just the remaining jelly on the bolt. It sputtered and went out just about the time that the giant whose shoulders I am currently standing came running into the garage area. “What the Hell was that?” The lookout, who incidentally failed to let me know the boss was coming and thus failing at his ONE job, said “did you hear that too?” Apparently, he had opted for a strategy of pretend surprise and acted like he had just beat the boss to the scene of the crime. I would have adopted the same strategy had I not been standing there holding a homemade crossbow.

I summoned my best George Washington and confessed that I could not tell a lie. I then proceeded to explain my entire thought process and notated with the appropriate scientific citations. As has happened more than once in my life, I had somehow impressed someone with the absolute absurdity of my actions. The boss was dumbfounded and could do nothing more than laugh to the point of near hysterics. When she had regained her composure, she asked if I had ever heard of the Hindenburg, and I explained that I had indeed. She wondered aloud if I had fully comprehended the lesson of rigid containers of highly combustible hydrogen gas. I learned the hard way that this was a rhetorical question. I was then grounded. I suppose in HR language it’s called writing someone up, but it’s the same thing. My crossbow was confiscated, and I was no longer permitted to do the Reacto Blast assembly nor was I allowed near the hydrogen cylinders. Today I’m trying to get my staff to do this same demo and they’re all afraid of the gas. They have no idea what I’m capable of, but lucky for me they don’t read any of my stuff.

One of my living heroes is a guy named Mike Row. He was the host of a TV show called “Dirty Jobs” and his life’s work, and that of his foundation, is to shine a light on the everyday people who do dirty, nasty and dangerous jobs that make life so enjoyable for the rest of us. He’s an amazing human and a great storyteller. One of his maxims is “safety third.” It’s a play on the “safety first” motto found in so many workplaces where accidents are a daily part of life. The idea is that if safety truly was first, none of these jobs would ever get done because they’re not safe. He makes a great point and it’s a legitimate one in so many jobs. Traveling science teacher is not one of those jobs.

Working smarter not harder is all fine and good so long as it’s not resulting in cutting corners or jeopardizing safety. Efficiency is awesome, burning down your workplace is not. These are hard learned lessons I’ve picked up along the way. But really, the lesson here is that if you think you have a foolproof plan, take a look in the mirror. The person looking back at you is the fool and they have every intention or ruining your plan.