Glenn Visitor Center Closes Saturday

This Saturday will be the last for the Visitor Center at the Glenn Research Center in Cleveland Ohio. Due to budget cuts, the VC will close and move to the Great Lakes Science Museum downtown. The VC is currently home for the Skylab 2 Apollo capsule, displayed in a small rotunda on a rotating base. It is assumed the spacecraft will follow the VC to Great Lakes, but the decision is up to the Smithsonian. There are a lot of newer air and space museums that would love to display a flown manned spacecraft.

If anyone is in the Cleveland Area, drop in one more time to great this unique CM.

"Look at the sky"

It was a beautiful morning in Houston, with a few days remaining of our Professional Development Conference at NASA's Johnson Space Center. We aerospace educators met annually at a NASA center to get up to date on the latest NASA education and science programs. The night before, we watched the movie Apollo 13 from the original mission control room, the film being projected on the same screen that displayed the televised images from the moon. When it was my turn to watch from the Flight Director's chair, I stood behind and paced - we never saw Gene Krantz sitting down. Earlier that day, I crossed the street to the municipal complex where a refreshed Apollo boilerplate BP-K had been placed on display. But now, a new day to hear from NASA on how to inspire today's youth.

We were meeting at the Gilruth Center, a multi-purpose facility for JSC employees. Noshing on pastries and morning caffeine, we were slowly making our way to our meeting room. Suddenly, someone came in saying, "Return to your duty stations. Return to your duty stations, now!" Someone said we were from across the country and had no duty at JSC, so we were sent to the meeting room where we were going anyway. Wondering why, we were told that something had happened in New York City, so we turned on the TV projector and saw smoke billowing from the World Trade Center. We watched a little, then tried to start our session while we monitored the video.

When the second plane hit we knew that there was something very serious in the works. The JSC guy who told us to get to our duty stations returned to say that JSC was closing down - planes were being grounded and fear that some were heading toward Washington. Or boss took the podium and offered a choice; remain in Houston until flights resumed or take our rentals and drive home. A call to the rental agency confirmed we could do this (with the appropriate rate increases), so we decided to drive home. Within an hour we were checked out of the hotel, with four of us heading east on I-10. Listening to the radio, we pieced together what had happened and discussed how the world was changed. One colleague remarked, "Look at the sky. Not a contrail in sight. We've never seen a sky without airplanes."

Stay tuned for the rest of this story.

Go for Orion

The new Orion spacecraft has just completed its preliminary design review, or PDR. This follows over 300 technical reviews, 100 peer reviews and 18 subsystem design reviews. The PDR is an important step in the development of the new spacecraft, verifying engineering reliability and safety, and is needed before manufacturing begins. Though an important step, waiting on this has not stopped NASA from the testing of subsystems, including the Launch Escape System. The Pad Abort 1 test boilerplate is in New Mexico waiting for it's upcoming test at the White Sands Missile Range. It will be launched by the power of the LES rockets in the same manner as was done with Apollo capsules in the 60's. I'll be watching to see what happens to this Orion test article. It may be tough to keep track of all the test articles, boilerplates and models to come in the next few years, but that is my goal to keep the Field Guide the most complete guide to American spacecraft on the internet!

Spacecraft of the Week #3

Apollo Boilerplate #1227 was one of many built by NASA to give to Navy and allied ships to train crews in the recovery of a wayward capsule. In an emergency, the Apollo spacecraft could be brought home earlier, even on land (though very hard on the astronauts!) and NASA wanted friendly help available, wherever it may be. Crews needed to be adept at stabilizing the capsule with a floatation collar, extracting the astronauts, and hauling the capsule on board. In 1970, BP-1127 was being used for training by a UK naval vessel when it became lost at sea. The circumstances surrounding this loss are unclear: bad weather and choppy seas, or perhaps a Soviet spy ship disguised as a fishing trawler grabbed it. Whatever the case, BP-1227 wound up in Soviet hands. Spy wise it had little value as the only thing inside these boilerplates was some ballast, and the size and shape were well known and available from many sources. Perhaps that is why the Soviets were amenable to it's return to the US. On September 8, 1970, the US Coast Guard icebreaker Southwind visited Murmansk as a port of call during a six month arctic survey. They were surprised when, with a considerable amount of hoopla, they were presented with the Apollo capsule.

Space Capsule to Time Capsule

The capsule made its way back to the states. Its history at this point is unclear, but not where it wound up. It was turned over the the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum and within a few years it found a home in Grand Rapids, Michigan. There (or possibly in NASM hands) it was fitted with a conical nose cone to cover the parachute compartment and give it the iconic Apollo shape. It was filled with memorabilia collected by local high schools and sealed on December 31, 1976 as a Time Capsule to be opened on our nation's Tricentennial on July 4, 2076. It originally sat in the median of a boulevard in downtown Grand Rapids, but has since moved to a logical and more accessible display area in front of the Public Museum of Grand Rapids. There, it welcomes visitors to the museum and the Roger B. Chaffee Planetarium. At least for another 67 years.