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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
But rather than agriculture, this young man had his mind set on other things.
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.
But school sadly didn't give this young man the kind of education that he needed to feed his inquisitive mind.
They weren't teaching much in the way of science and the sort of things that he was really interested in.
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.
In 1661, he went off to Cambridge, to Trinity College.
And even here, he still wasn't able to get the kind of education that he desired.
There wasn't much science again in the degree course. It wasn't considered a serious subject in those days.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
But for some reason, in 1684, 20 years after his apple inspiration, suddenly his thoughts once again turned to gravity.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
After getting the idea greenlit by the National Trust and the UK Space Agency, Libby realised she had a slightly daunting task.
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.
Here's Tim Peake again.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
Then at Gravity Fields, which is essentially Glastonbury for the world of science, this special appeal video was played.
Most people in this room will know Tim 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.
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.
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.
The event was the talk of the town and it felt like everyone wanted a piece of our space sapplings.
Sky News, National BBC and Local BBC. As with these exciting events, everybody wants to be involved.
And with the venue filling up, hospitality and catering were done in a uniquely Woolsthorpey way.
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.
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.
Tim Peake, please do come and address the... [ Inaudible].
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?
Having a sapling such as this with such an amazing story behind it will only help to inspire our visitors even more.
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.