The U. S. Space Walk of Fame Museum

While researching things to do in Florida, I discovered a museum dedicated to the Russian space program.  My heart beat faster: we would be staying in St. Pete Beach, on the outskirts of St. Petersburg.  We could go there!  Then came the crushing realization that the museum was located in St. Petersburg, Russia, not St. Petersburg, Florida. 

While I’m fascinated, amazed, and proud of all of America’s accomplishments in space, I’m also fascinated by the Russian efforts.  Their country sent men into space before we did.  In response to their efforts, America switched over from the Air Force space plane programs (such as the X-1, X-2, and X-15) to NASA’s space capsules for the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs.  Then we discarded the capsule concept--in part because we always splashed down in the middle of the ocean, which necessitated huge sea-going recovery efforts--and reverted to the space plane idea for the Space Shuttle program.  Now we’ve discarded the space plane concept, and are reverting to the space capsule for Project Orion.  Meanwhile, the Russians have operated space capsules continuously since Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space.  Unlike ours, their capsules can actually land, which saves on Naval recovery efforts.  And while America built Skylab (and then let it burn up in the atmosphere), the Russians operated space stations continuously from the early 1970s, until the construction of the International Space Station. 

While experimentation is good, every time America decides to retool our equipment and operations necessitates a break in our space program.  While we’re doing this rebuilding and redirecting process again, our astronauts are hitching rides up to the ISS in Russian capsules, which according to officials at Kennedy Space Center costs us over sixty million dollars per astronaut.  Meanwhile, the Russians have persisted with the concepts and programs that worked for them, and thereby saved themselves long breaks and costly retooling efforts.

At any rate, my Internet search bore fruit when I discovered The U. S. Space Walk of Fame Museum.  Operated by volunteers in a modest office building in Titusville, Florida, it houses a wealth of information, equipment, and paraphernalia covering the American space program.  There’s a simulated control room where children (of all ages) can get an idea of all the equipment and duties associated with a rocket launch.  There are displays of the rockets that launched Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo.  A visitor can page through booklets, see spacesuits, posters, models, and collectible memorabilia.  I cannot even begin to describe everything packed into the tiny building.  On the morning my wife and I visited, we had the museum to ourselves.  Thus we had time to page through the photo albums, reports and manuals, and photograph the displays for future perusal. 

Believe it or not, there’s even a small area dedicated to the Russian space program!

The U. S. Space Walk of Fame Museum may not be the high-gloss production of Kennedy Space Center, but if you’re interested in seeing a wealth of informative and fun displays in a low-key atmosphere, be sure to check it out.  Not only is it less expensive than a day at Kennedy Space Center (although that’s a fun place too), it’ll save you thousands of dollars on a trip to Russia. 

Dragon Dave 

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Touring NASA’s Vehicle Assembly Building

The VAB from 3.5 miles away.

From a distance, NASA’s Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB), at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, doesn’t look so big.  Even up close, it’s hard to comprehend that it’s the fourth-largest building by volume in the world.  Yet the building was constructed to house the Apollo program: not just the astronauts’ capsules, but also the enormous Saturn V rockets that launched them into space.

Given the role it has played in the American space program, my wife and I were excited to learn that we could tour the VAB, now that the shuttles have been retired.  We would only have this opportunity for a limited time, we were told.  Once the Orion project gets into full swing, the VAB will be filled with new rockets, spaceships, and people, and it will be impossible for the ordinary person to tour it.

I soon realized that a tour through the VAB was not a tour through the VAB.  Plastic cones and portable fencing limited our footsteps to a short, L-shaped section of floor floor.  Security guards kept watch over us, just in case, driven mad by the immense structure, one of us made a wild dash across the open concrete floor.  So we made an effort to ignore the guards, and their holstered weapons, as we listened to our guide’s words, and studied the signs and displays.

Still, the eyes tend to wander amid such vastness.  Beyond the cones and plastic fencing, construction vehicles and supplies awaited their time of service.  The building is sectioned off, so we couldn’t see the complete interior.  Overhead, strange industrial cranes that had once pulled the space shuttle up, stood it vertical, and lifted it to a place where it could be worked on sat idle.  Apparently, their operators had needed to take special care with the shuttles’ wings, as they only had inches of clearance in the VAB when the cranes hauled the great space planes around like one of those arcade game claws that grabs a stuffed animal.  As we listened to our guide, workers entered and left the facility.  Occasionally we heard a motor start up, and we would turn to watch an elevator merge with the vast grid-work above our heads. 

Welcome, Orion.

A mockup of the new Orion capsule gave us a sense of the sheer magnitude of our surroundings.  As a cluttered house disguises its true size, NASA’s Vehicle Assembly Building has so much moveable infrastructure that it’s difficult to take in how large it really is.  I could only imagine what my days might be like, were I a worker in such a hive of activity.  Then our guide led us out, and the guards followed in lockstep, ensuring that none of us were driven mad by an insatiable desire to actually tour the VAB. 

Dragon Dave

Everybody’s Comin’ to Kennedy Space Center

Guests line up for photographs outside
Kennedy Space Center's new entrance.

There’s a place that celebrates mankind’s greatest feats, and champions all we’ve yet to accomplish.  That place is Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and if you haven’t come here yet, you're really missing out.

Some hot new rides of the future.

When it comes to space flight, there’s so much history to celebrate.  Audacious engineers, who designed powerful rockets like the Redstone, Atlas, and the Titan.  Brave pilots, who climbed into the tiny Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo capsules, and blasted into orbit and beyond.  Designers who took the original rocket planes like the X-1 and the X-15, and transformed them into the Space Shuttle.  What’s next you ask?  How about more trips to the Moon and Mars aboard the Orion capsule, or flights high above the Earth aboard the Lynx Mk. II from XCor Aerospace, and the Sierra Nevada Corporations’ Dream Chaser?

"No, honestly, I'm not makin' the rabbit ears this time."

Not enough, you say?  Well then, why not learn about NASA’s robots?  They fly through space, and tell us about other planets we could visit.  There’re some on Mars right now, such as the rover Curiosity, helping us to prepare for manned missions there.  Some are as cute and amiable as they come.  You never know: you’re next best friend might just be a robot.

When this baby goes boom, you'll hear it.

Still not enough?  Wait, there’s more!  You can hop on a bus and see the launch pads for the moon missions and the Space Shuttles.  You could get an in depth look of the biggest rocket ever ignited, the Saturn V.  You can see all sorts of informative and entertaining programs on current space efforts, such as the International Space Station.  You can watch IMAX 3-D movies.  You'll learn about NASA’s programs, as well as those of the Russians.  You can even touch a moon rock!

"Nice to meet you too, Mr. Spaceman."

Still not convinced?  Bored with static displays like you find in museums?  Think the latest Hollywood productions make NASA’s movies pale by comparison?  Well, how about the opportunity to meet a spaceman? 

I asked Wendy Lawrence all kinds of questions,
and she answered them all!

You can even talk to a real life astronaut, such as Wendy Lawrence, who flew on four Space Shuttle missions!

"Why don't you two stand next to the
Shuttle Launch Experience?"

People travel here from all over the world, because there’s so much to see and do here.  Visitors come from all walks of life, because the hopes and dreams of space exploration unite mankind.  So if you’ve not yet visited Kennedy Space Center, the question surely must not be if, but when you’ll visit.  ‘Cause like I said, everybody’s comin’ to Kennedy Space Center.  Why miss out on a great thing like that?

And now, for the commercial...

Dragon Dave

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Understanding Kimi Raikkonen: Part 2

Kimi Raikkonen takes on Pete Conrad.

As I was reading The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe yesterday, I realized I compared the wrong test pilot and astronaut with Kimi Raikkonen in Part 1.  Pete Conrad, not Michael Collins, was the Navy test pilot who saw so many of his friends die during that a particularly bad stretch of his career.  Conrad would go on to fly aboard Gemini 5, command Gemini 11, become the third man to walk on the moon on Apollo 12, and command the Skylab 2 repair mission.  But before Pete Conrad could go into space, first he had to demonstrate (like Kimi Raikkonen has done in Formula One) that he had The Right Stuff.

Most of us, including Pete Conrad’s wife Jane, would wonder how he could keep his enthusiasm for such dangerous duty during that time.  When Pete Conrad was stationed in Jacksonville, Florida, he found the crash remains of his good friend Bud Jennings in swampland near the airfield.  Shortly thereafter, he lost two more pilots in his group.  One died when a catapult lost pressure, and his fighter thundered off the aircraft carrier and into the sea. 

Three months after Jennings’ death, Pete Conrad joined the Navy’s new test pilot program at Patuxent River in Maryland.  Eleven deaths occurred in rapid succession.  When one pilot slowed too much during landing, his A3J attack plane stalled, and he crashed.  A week later, another group member in the same model plane experienced instrument malfunction.  His plane corkscrewed down from eight hundred feet.  Like his colleague, his body was burned beyond recognition.  Another friend, flying a F-4 Phantom, dived from twenty thousand feet altitude into Chesapeake Bay.  A pilot in the class behind Conrad, while performing test dives, was still making precise instrument readings when his plane plowed into the ground.  And then there was his friend Ted Whelan, who experienced a structural failure during takeoff that made landing impossible.  Whelan followed instructions, and the explosive charge ejected him from the plane.  Rescue crews watched as the parachute rig plummeted down from the proper altitude, airspeed, and location, and smashed into the runway.

Yet Conrad, like his fellow pilots, kept his enthusiasm for flying.  Every night they got together, and as they drank and caroused, they also talked through every accident.  The one golden rule was that no one blamed the equipment.  If the plane experienced a malfunction, a pilot with The Right Stuff should be able to compensate.  A pilot had to follow procedure, which it appeared Bud Jennings didn’t.  He took off with his cockpit open slightly, and carbon monoxide buildup made him pass out.  The young pilot making instrument readings didn’t have enough experience: he should have paid more attention to his descent rate.  And Ted Whelan, even if he hadn’t scoured the craft himself to find the structural defect, he obviously didn’t check out his parachute rig before that.  Even having failed at that, Conrad and the others argued, Whelan must have had fifteen to twenty seconds in which he could have disengaged himself from the seat and opened his parachute manually.  How could he just watch himself fall?

I may have gotten Pete Conrad’s name wrong in Part 1, but experience and attention to detail has given me the ability to compensate for that error.  What leads me to believe that I can convince you in Part 3 that Kimi Raikkonen and Pete Conrad have similar mindsets?  Because I’ve got The Right Stuff, that’s why!

Dragon Dave