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.