SEAN DOUGLAS: Hello and welcome to the National Trust Podcast.

I'm Sean Douglas, Podcast Producer at the National Trust

and today we're bringing you a story which is quite literally

out of this world.

It started five years ago with the seeds of an idea. It needed

a massive team effort and was inspired by nature.

Today, rather than starting our journey in the grounds of a

National Trust property, we've made our way to the iconic

biospheres and exotic plant collection of the Eden Project

in St Austell Cornwall.

Amongst all of Eden's exciting flora and fauna sits a very

ordinary looking apple tree sapling that looks a bit out of

place.

It's skinny and spindly and compared to some of its

neighbours looks a little plain Jane.

But you should never judge a book by its cover because this

sapling has one inspirational story to tell.

TIMOTHY PEAKE: There's an incredible amount of power,

noise and vibration as the engines accelerate to full

thrust. There's not a huge amount of acceleration in the

first few seconds. It's 300 tonnes of rocket lifting off.

My name is Tim Peake and I'm an astronaut with the European

Space Agency.

SEAN DOUGLAS: The date is the 15th of December. 2015 and Tim

has hitched a ride on the Russian Soyuz rocket on a

mission to the International Space Station. Quite possibly

the commute of a lifetime.

TIMOTHY PEAKE: Quite quickly after leaving the launch pad

that's when the acceleration really kicks in. You're on the

way.

It's far noisier outside the rocket for the spectators who

are about a kilometer away.

Inside we have a number of different stages to go through.

The first stage will take up to about 60 kilometers.

And then we jettison the first stage boosters. And at that

point, we have a really big drop in acceleration as those first

stage boosters fall away.

It's a much gentler, smoother ride on the second stage with

just one engine firing.

That gets us above the Earth's atmosphere. And that's when the

nose fairing jettisons so we can get to see the view of space

approaching through the window.

And then there's the third stage kicks in, and that is pure

acceleration.

Up to about 4Gs of acceleration. It just goes on and on and on.

The whole launch sequence lasts for nearly 9 minutes.

The idea, of course, is to get you up to about 220 kilometers

at about 25 times the speed of sound. So it's a wild ride.

You really are feeling the full force of that rocket's

acceleration. And then, you know, within a fraction of a

second, the engine cuts out.

And we're in Zero G.

Very quiet very peaceful and everything floats inside the

spacecraft and you know that you've safely made it to orbit.

SEAN DOUGLAS: The ability to fly into space is quite a recent

phenomenon but the principles that made it possible are much

much older.

It all started hundreds of years ago on the 25th of December and

with the birth of a very special child.

Richard Fairhead, National Trust volunteer, explains more.

RICHARD FAIRHEAD: On the 25th of December, a baby was born

surrounded by farm animals.

Some chickens, a few pigs, I have no doubt, and some fields

for vegetables.

The main crop, if you can call it a crop, were sheep.

In Lincolnshire, of course, sheep and wool were very

important in those days. And his mother was very keen that he

should take on the farm.

SEAN DOUGLAS: But rather than agriculture, this young man had

his mind set on other things.

RICHARD FAIRHEAD: He was interested in how things worked.

He made models.

There was one famous model he made of a windmill. He took it

out into the field and the wind blew and it turned the sails

just as it should.

And the story goes on that he brought it indoors and began to

think, well, it's not going to work indoors, there's no wind.

He thought about this for some time and came up with the idea.

He made a little treadmill, like you have in a hamster cage,

found a real mouse, put the mouse in the treadmill, the

mouse did its stuff, and turned the sails.

I think that's an indication of his practical approach to things

and his inquisitiveness. That practical approach to life

really saw him through the rest of his life.

When he became a teenager, his mother sent him to Grantham to

the King's School.

SEAN DOUGLAS: But school sadly didn't give this young man the

kind of education that he needed to feed his inquisitive mind.

RICHARD FAIRHEAD: They weren't teaching much in the way of

science and the sort of things that he was really interested

in.

SEAN DOUGLAS: And despite having her mind set on him taking over

the farm after school, his mother was eventually persuaded

to let him go to university.

RICHARD FAIRHEAD: In 1661, he went off to Cambridge, to

Trinity College.

SEAN DOUGLAS: And even here, he still wasn't able to get the

kind of education that he desired.

RICHARD FAIRHEAD: There wasn't much science again in the degree

course. It wasn't considered a serious subject in those days.

SEAN DOUGLAS: But finally, in 1665, he got his degree. And

free to study more autonomously, he was able to research the

things that interested him. But this was short-lived.

RICHARD FAIRHEAD: In 1665, in London, the plague hit, the

bubonic plague, and it was beginning to go out to other

parts of the country.

And they were so worried at Cambridge that if it got there,

with all the people meeting in the university, it would be a

real disaster. So they took the decision to close the university

and sent everybody home.

SEAN DOUGLAS: So our young scientist was sent back to

Lincoln to social distance. But far from disrupting his

research, lockdown gave him the time and space to immerse

himself in his work.

RICHARD FAIRHEAD: So in about a year and a half, he got started

on some of his big ideas. And so that year was so important. The

world changed in that year.

SEAN DOUGLAS: He studied religion and philosophy,

experimented with lenses. And was the first to split white

light into its rainbow spectrum with a prism.

But it was an incidence of happenstance while he was

relaxing in his apple orchard that would lead to his greatest

discovery.

RICHARD FAIRHEAD: He was sitting underneath the tree, probably

reading a book, thinking about some theory he was following up.

And as apples do, one of them fell down beside him.

And I guess he was startled.

He looked up to see where the apple had come from and he began

to think what makes things fall directly to the Earth?

Is there some sort of attraction? Is there some sort

of force which is involved?

And of course he thought about this over the years to come and

in time came up with this whole theory of his about gravity.

SEAN DOUGLAS: So in case you haven't guessed it yet the man

we're talking about is sir Isaac Newton and the property the

National Trust's Woolsthorpe Manor in Lincoln still home you

to Newton's apple tree.

His theory of gravity is something we now take for

granted but in the 1600s according to Dr Cornelius

Schilt, postdoctoral scholar at Oxford, this realisation had a

monumental impact.

CORNELIUS SCHILT: It changed the world of mathematics and the

world of natural philosophy to such a degree that the entire

18th century, so the following century.

Was basically designed as a confirmation of what Newton had

written.

SEAN DOUGLAS: However, despite the revolutionary impact of

Isaac's encounter, gravity may not have been something that

occupied many of his thoughts. In fact, it may have been

something that he almost forgot about.

CORNELIUS SCHILT: He's much more interested in optics. His first

publications are actually in optics.

He makes his own reflecting telescopes. He's not really

thinking about gravity.

He's not interested in it anymore.

SEAN DOUGLAS: But for some reason, in 1684, 20 years after

his apple inspiration, suddenly his thoughts once again turned

to gravity.

CORNELIUS SCHILT: Out of the blue he drops everything that

he's doing and he starts writing the Principia and the next year

and a half is devoted to just the Principia.

SEAN DOUGLAS: The Principia or to give it its full name,

Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica was a three-volume

publication where Newton first described his theory for the

universal law of gravitation.

CORNELIUS SCHILT: When the Principia came out it was

recognized as a masterpiece. This book solved so many

problems.

So it gave him instant fame. In 1684, no one knew Isaac Newton.

Oh yeah, there was that man who had written something about

optics, about light, about colours, and that's all wrong.

And then in 1687, he's recognised as Europe's best

scientist ever.

SEAN DOUGLAS: Up until the publication of Newton's Law,

there were various schools of thought in what was then called

natural philosophy. Observations and calculations were made about

natural phenomena but in isolation.

So observing the planets without the stars or observing the stars

and the planets without thinking about how it's connected to what

happens on Earth.

Here's Dr Thomas Sotiriou, Professor of Gravitational

Physics at the University Of Nottingham.

THOMAS SOTIRIOU: It describes the motion of every object under

the influence of the force of gravity.

So it can describe projectiles, it can describe the motion of

planets.

It can describe the motion of satellites, and that is exactly

what makes it useful, that it's not an empirical description of

just one phenomenon.

You can later use it to describe a huge array of phenomena. So in

this sense, it is the foundation for space travel.

SEAN DOUGLAS: And hundreds of miles above our heads, traveling

at 25 times the speed of sound, Tim Peake was also pondering the

universal laws that kept him on a solid trajectory. Towards the

International Space Station.

TIMOTHY PEAKE: It's amazing to think of how advanced the

theories and principles are from hundreds of years ago that have

stood the test of time.

SEAN DOUGLAS: Tim was so inspired by Newton's work that

he actually named his space mission Principia and his space

patch depicted the famous apple falling from the tree. Also,

travelling beside him in the capsule was one more gesture of

homage to Newton, his work and that inspirational tree.

This started from a seed of an idea from Libby Jackson, Human

Exploration Manager at the UK Space Agency, when she realised

that Newton's apple tree still stands in the grounds of

Woolsthorpe Manor.

LIBBY JACKSON: I had this idea.

I think it was my idea.

Tim's flight had obviously been named after Principia and I knew

the apple tree was there. I wonder if we could get some of

those seeds from the apple tree and send them up into space.

SEAN DOUGLAS: After getting the idea greenlit by the National

Trust and the UK Space Agency, Libby realised she had a

slightly daunting task.

LIBBY JACKSON: I remember seeing, I think it was 12 seeds

came in this little wrapped up foil pouch and then it was my

job to make sure they got into space.

SEAN DOUGLAS: Here's Tim Peake again.

TIMOTHY PEAKE: They didn't come up by the traditional method

because I think they were a little bit late in being

delivered. And so I think they were given to me in Baikonur and

they had to go into my Soyuz spacecraft. But it was all kind

of accounted for. It was just a little bit late in the day that

they arrived.

SEAN DOUGLAS: While on the ISS with Tim, those apple seeds were

subject to the same extreme forces, zero Gs and radiation as

Tim and the rest of the crew.

TIMOTHY PEAKE: It's an interesting experiment to do to

see how they grow, see if there's any change to the trees.

But also it's a very nice way of linking the mission back to Sir

Isaac Newton and the incredible work that he did.

SEAN DOUGLAS: The seeds made it safely back to Earth and the

project team waited with bated breath to see if the seeds would

grow into healthy space saplings.

And of the 13 that flew with Tim, 10 started to grow into

healthy siblings of Newton's famous apple tree.

But now that we had them, we started to think, what would be

the best way to utilise these inspirational and historic

trees?

GENERIC: Welcome everybody to Woolsthorpe Manor. I'm sure

pretty much most of you will have been to some of the

fabulous Gravity Fields talks that we've had this week.

SEAN DOUGLAS: Then at Gravity Fields, which is essentially

Glastonbury for the world of science, this special appeal

video was played.

GENERIC: Most people in this room will know Tim Peake.

TIMOTHY PEAKE: Hi, I'm European Space Agency astronaut Tim

Peake. Thanks to careful nurturing at Kew, The Apple

Pips, which flew with me in space, have now grown into fine

young trees.

We want to find partners to give them somewhere to grow, to help

tell their story and continue to inspire potential future Isaac

Newtons. Would you like a space sapling? Tell us why by

contacting the UK Space Agency.

SEAN DOUGLAS: So the stage was set and organisations from

across the country made their appeals for one of our unique

space saplings and after much deliberation in January earlier

this year a presentation for the winners was held at Woolsthorpe

Manor and you know what? It was a pretty big deal.

CLAIRE GALLEN: My name is Claire Gallen and I'm the Marketing

Officer for Woolsthorpe Manor. Today is the award ceremony for

the Newton's Space sapplings project.

SEAN DOUGLAS: The event was the talk of the town and it felt

like everyone wanted a piece of our space sapplings.

GENERIC: Sky News, National BBC and Local BBC. As with these

exciting events, everybody wants to be involved.

SEAN DOUGLAS: And with the venue filling up, hospitality and

catering were done in a uniquely Woolsthorpey way.

GENERIC: A lot of things have got the apple in.

Duck, mandarin bites. Apples and liver. Also we've managed to get

the Newton's Fizzisics, the apple juice.

Everybody's ready, everybody knows what they're doing, I know

what I'm supposed to be doing!

Everyone's sort of arriving and the big star attraction is we've

got Tim Peake coming to give the winners their trees.

I'm waiting to meet Tim Peake, that's a bit I'm getting very

excited about.

CLAIRE GALLEN: It's about quarter past 12.

Most of the guests have arrived. We've got 15 minutes now for

some more mingling and nibbles and then the speeches.

GENERIC: Tim Peake, please do come and address the... [

Inaudible].

TIMOTHY PEAKE: Thank you very much Secretary of State. I'd

like to now announce the winners. So the first location,

the Brogdale Collections.

And the second sapling is going to the Catalyst Science

Discovery Centre. The third sapling is going to the Eden

Project. And could Dr Rachel Warmington, the science team

manager, come up and receive it?

RACHEL WARMINGTON: Having a sapling such as this with such

an amazing story behind it will only help to inspire our

visitors even more.

SEAN DOUGLAS: And that's the remarkable story of the rather

unremarkable looking apple tree that now calls the Eden Project

home.

I know the question you're asking. Did flying to space

affect the way the trees will grow?

The short answer, no. So was it all worth it?

Well, yes, because as well as being a beautiful manor house,

Woolsthorpe is a place that lives and breathes scientific

inspiration. And finding ways for visitors to take that

inspiration beyond the walls of the property is something Ian

Cooper, Woolsthorpe's general manager, takes great pride in.

Thanks for listening to this episode of the National Trust

Podcast. We'll be back soon with a new episode. But for now, from

me, Sean Douglas, goodbye.