Space exhibits can be found at museums around the world, but one of the most pioneering is located in this Australian city. The Powerhouse Museum resides in a complex of buildings that once generated electricity for Sydney's tram lines.

Today, it welcomes roughly a million visitors every year to examine planes, trains and automobiles, along with a collection of unusual mouse traps that illustrate creativity and design.

The museum presents an eclectic collection of technology, industrial design, art and culture with plenty of hands-on exhibits. Its international profile is so strong that the Powerhouse was the only venue outside of the USA to host the Smithsonian's exhibit of Star Wars models and movie costumes.

The space exhibit is one of the highlights of the museum. Like the result of a bad landing accident, the nose of a space shuttle points through one of the walls.

Visitors can walk through this on their way to a full-sized replica of a space station habitation module, similar to the design that could be launched to the International Space Station.

An actual F1 rocket engine from the first stage of a Saturn 5 moon rocket hangs above the visitor like a cathedral dome. Stand beneath it, and speakerphones replay crackly sound grabs of Yuri Gagarin's flight and other highlights from space history.

Elsewhere in the exhibit, actual Apollo flight garments and unappetising samples of space food invoke the more human aspects of a space mission. There are models and items from the space programs of Europe and China. Australia's own role in space tracking, space science, and even human spaceflight (two Australian-born astronauts have flown) is presented.

Some of the most interesting hardware on display comes from the former Soviet Union. Models of Cosmos satellites hang suspended in midair, joined by Venera and Luna probes.

On the ground, a replica of a Lunokhod lunar rover squats like something from a postmodern science fiction film. Visitors can also walk up to a full-sized model of a Soyuz descent module and peer inwards at its cramped interior.

Kerrie Dougherty is the curator of space technology for the Powerhouse Museum. She discussed her work in setting up and running the exhibition with SpaceDaily correspondent Dr Morris Jones.

Q: How did the Powerhouse begin its involvement with space exploration?

A: Originally, the museum had no plans for it. The previous incarnation of the Powerhouse Museum, which was a museum of applied arts and sciences housed in a much smaller building, had a few models of space technology like Sputnik and a large full-scale model of an Apollo Lunar Module that sat outside the building. The Lunar Module was originally part of a US exhibition that toured Australia and India, and was given to the museum at the end of its tour. But the Lunar Module is so degraded from its years of exposure that it is no longer on display.

Around 1984, when the Powerhouse Museum was being set up, the first director of the museum realised that there was no space exhibit and decided to change this. At this time, we had the shuttle flying and plans for Space Station Freedom. So there was a lot of buzz about space, and the museum wasn't originally planning to cover it. It was a wonderful decision to include space, but it meant that space was originally behind the eight ball. It didn't have an exhibition space, a significant collection of exhibits, or a budget.

I was originally employed by the museum on other duties, but I made no secret of my interest in space exploration. I was ready to finish work for the museum and take a trip on the Trans Siberian Railway, when I was asked to become the curator of space technology. The cheque for the trip was in my pocket, but I tore it up and took the job.

Q: What did you want to convey in the exhibition?

A: When the director came up with the idea of a space exhibit, he didn't really have a precise definition of what it would cover. So I had to begin work on this. Remember, we were in the middle of the cold war, so there were a lot of tensions. One of my interests had always been the Soviet space program. I was disappointed that the media did not give it much recognition. I wanted to create an exhibition that would look at space activities around the world, and show that space was not just the domain of the USA. I wanted to cover the USA, the Soviet Union, Europe, China, India, and, of course, Australia. There was a lot of expansion of international space activities in the eighties. The other thing I wanted to convey is that space development is not just for a small cluster of technological enthusiasts, but affects everyone.

Q: How did you start work on the exhibition?

A: The first problems I confronted were the lack of an exhibition space and a budget. I needed to negotiate with other exhibition curators to obtain room. They had to hive off sections of their own space for the space exhibition. Part of the budget was re-allocated from other exhibitions, but we also needed to raise sponsorship funding.

In the earliest concept for the exhibition, when I thought I would have only a small space and a small budget, the first idea was a comparison of science fact and science fiction. This would leverage peoples' interest in science fiction as a way of exposing them to real space technology. We would set up a replica of the bridge of the starship Enterprise from Star Trek, with different bridge stations serving as information stations for the exhibition. The problem with this was that Paramount would not give us permission to use the Star Trek concept. We found that obtaining the rights to any sort of popular science fiction concept was hugely expensive.

The space exhibit found a home at the end of the Boiler Hall, which has a 23 metre high ceiling. So I decided to utilise the height of this space. At one point, we considered installing a replica of the base of a Saturn 5 moon rocket, as if the rocket were protruding through the ceiling. People could have walked around inside it, and there would have been exhibits on two levels. But this was not compatible with fire regulations, as the enclosed spaces were too far from fire exits.

Eventually, we settled on an arrangement of space hardware hanging from the ceiling, suspended in midair, with a two-level walkway through the exhibit.

The next step was to obtain exhibits. We wanted to look at exploration and also applications. It was hard to obtain real artefacts because most of the important ones are already in other museums. Some can't be exhibited because they didn't return to Earth. So we needed to obtain replicas, or make them. The most time-consuming part of the work was establishing connections to various foreign space agencies and organizations to secure exhibits. At the time, there was no other exhibition anywhere else in the world that had such an international focus. It was challenging to locate the right people to talk to in the Soviet Union and China. We had a lot of false starts, but the local embassies were very helpful.

These were also the days before email. I spent a lot of hours on the phone to Moscow. In 1986, just after the Chernobyl explosion, I sat on a phone for three quarters of an hour waiting for an operator in Moscow to put my call through.

Q: Were there problems in dealing with the Soviet Union?

A: It was difficult at times, but once you got to the right person, it became easier. Nobody wanted to take responsibility for anything that wasn't their own job. We had to learn about the ways the Russians did business, and they had little experience in dealing with Australia. So it was a learning curve for both of us.

Q: How about the other suppliers?

A: We dealt with the National Air and Space Museum in the USA, and as with the Soviet Union, it took a lot of work to get negotiations completed. But the US Consul General helped a lot, and also placed us in touch with aerospace companies who later became our sponsors. Rockwell and Boeing supplied some of the most interesting exhibits.

We were always very open in explaining to the various space agencies that the exhibit would not be exclusively about their own programs, but it was interesting to see their reaction to seeing plans for the exhibitions. People would complain that other nations had too much exhibition space, and they didn't have enough. We tried to produce a balance, especially between the USA and the Soviet Union, but the final exhibit is also limited by the material that was actually supplied.

We wanted to put more Australian material too, but we were unable to obtain a lot of the items we wanted because they are in other museums, such as Woomera in South Australia.

Q: Does being an Australian give you a different perspective on space?

A: I think it gives you an advantage in being neutral. Even though we are allies of the USA, we did not have a large vested interest in the US space program. So we could look at a broader spectrum of activities. Museums in nations with large space programs tend to focus mostly on their own space programs, too.

The Australian Bicentenary in 1988, when the Powerhouse Museum opened, also allowed other nations to contribute as a bicentennial project.

Q: What sort of a reaction do you get from the school students who tour the exhibit?

A: Primary school students love space, dinosaurs, ghosts and disasters. They are usually enthusiastic about the exhibition. It's harder to interest older students, though.

Q: What sort of work do you do on a day-by-day basis?

A: Curators have to clean the artefacts, but we don't clean the carpets. We do this on a weekly basis. We need to check on the interactive and audiovisual displays. But the bulk of my daily activities don't involve maintenance of the exhibition. I develop public programs for the museums, I answer public inquiries, I work on other new exhibits, and sometimes I have to talk to SpaceDaily.

Much of the material in the exhibit is on loan, and part of my work involves building up a permanent collection. The material from the Soviet Academy of Sciences was originally on loan, but after the fall of the Soviet Union we were able to buy it.

Q: Space exploration doesn't seem to be a major issue with the general public right now. Why?

A: I think it's partially because the media doesn't give it much coverage, so it doesn't go onto the public agenda. If you talk to people on the street, though, they usually express interest in space. The sad thing is that people think it is remote from their lives. The exhibition tries to correct this. I don't think the space community in general focuses on promoting the practical applications to the general public. There's also a misconception that space activity is only for large nations, but we show Australia's role in space too.

Morris Jones can be reached at morrisjonesNOSPAMhotmail.com. Replace NOSPAM with @ to send email.

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