"Where Next, Columbus?"
 
by Edith Bonnet and Russ Davidson
 
in "Encounters" (Vol. 7, p. 27)
 
	The Armillary Sphere, which like the Eiffel Tower in Paris,
is being constructed by a consortium of private companies with
government endorsement, is a giant celestial sphere ninety meters
high and eighty meters wide depicting the solar system and the
stars of the Zodiac.  The Sphere, through which four thousand
visitors an hour are able to pass, will include a mobile of the
solar system with planets revolving to music in their proper
orbits around the sun.  Within the space of each hour, the
planets will complete the orbital movements of the last five
hundred years.  Visitors will be able to reach the Sphere's eight
meridians of celestial longitude and five circles of celestial
latitudes, corresponding to the equator, the tropics, and the
polar circles, on a series of elevators and escalators.  Those
ascending to these points will also have a view of the hillsides,
mountains and sky that comprise the landscape of Madrid and its
environs.
	An exhibition area is also scheduled to open in 1992 as part
of the Armillary Complex.  The "Where Next, Columbus?" project,
to which the National Air and Space Museum is providing technical
assistance, will remain as a permanent exhibit in Madrid.
	"Where Next, Columbus?" seeks to demonstrate that
exploration is a cultural process which entails difficult
challenges and choices.  The exhibit questions why people
explore, by considering the political, economic, scientific, and
technological motives underlying not only Columbus's exploration
of the New World, but also twentieth-century exploration of space
as well as possible future voyages into the solar system and
beyond.
	The "Where Next, Columbus?" project will house three
separate exhibits.  These are, Exploring This World, Exploring
New Worlds in Space, and To The Stars.  Exploring This World will
focus on the history of exploration during the last five hundred
years, employing maps, globes, and other media to illustrate how
our image of the world has been progressively transformed through
the accomplishments of explorers.  The second exhibit, Exploring
New Worlds in Space, examines the manned versus unmanned issue in
space exploration.  Visitors proceed along either of two paths--
robotic or human exploration--making choices by balancing goals,
costs, and other factors.  Both paths lead to the centerpiece of
this exhibit, a room-size replica of the Martian landscape that
includes a habitat for astronauts and a working biosphere in
which real food will be grown.  An automated rover and small
robots will perform work likely to be either too dangerous or too
repetitious to warrant an actual human presence on the planet.
	The third exhibit, To The Stars, examines the infinitely
greater scales--in time and distances--of interstellar
exploration and the concomitant challenges of propulsion and life
support.  The focus of this exhibit is the "stellarium," a fiber-
optic scale model of a 100-light-year diameter sphere of the
galaxy.  Nearly 800 stars, each the tip of a fiber-optic strand,
are set at accurate distance and brightness scales within a
transparent cylinder.  The stellarium may be programmed to
highlight individual stars, so as to demonstrate, for example,
the particular areas within the galaxy that might be searched for
"extraterrestrial intelligence."  As part of this exhibit,
curriculum materials and educational software will be distributed
to schools and two new films, Spacefaring and Contact, will be
screened.
 
Reprint permission granted by publisher.