Whew! After all the `heavy' postings lately on Fuel storage, ship
design, weapon effectiveness et. al., this may seem trivial,
but I though y'all might enjoy it.
I recently had to take a trip to Huntsville, Alabama,and spent a
day at the Space & Rocket Center located there. Now for those
of you located in the Spinward Marches, Huntsville is the
home of the Redstone Missile Arsenal (developer of, among
others, the Nike, Ajax, Hawk and Redstone missiles), The
George C. Marshall Space Flight Center (NASA's center for
propulsion development), and the U.S. Space Camp and U.S.
Space Academy. The Redstone rocket that powered the Mercury
space flight were built and test stand fired here, as were
the Saturn I (Gemini), Saturn V (Apollo and all Moon
missions), and much of the Shuttle. All of these are on
display, including a full scale Shuttle, with external tanks
and SRB's! Very Impressive!
And the museum has lots of hands-on exhibits on every aspect of
space travel. I never saw a kid wandering around with that
"why did I get dragged Here" look! Many items on display are
the real thing, like Wally Schirra's Sigma 7 Mercury capsule,
and the Apollo 16 cockpit. In addition there is a large
Omnimax theater (67' hemispherical screen) that, at the time,
was showing "The Dream Is Alive". Very Good!
Also, there is a bus tour that takes you through the Arsenal and
Marshall center to see the test-stands where engines are
fired, and gives you a tour through the working mock-up of
the Space Station Freedom (due to begin launching in 1995).
Cost for everything (Museum, Theater, and Bus tour) is only
$10.00. A steal! I spent 6+ hours there and still had more to
see.... I've been to the Nation Air and Space Museum in
Washington, and while that's great, this is better!
If any of you have specific questions (that you think I could
answer 8-)), feel free to drop me a mail message at the
address below. This is Not a paid endorsement!
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Bruce T. Ritchie ([email removed]) AKA: Zben Blaine
Plymouth State College
Plymouth, N.H. USA
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"The knack of flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground,
and miss.
Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy