US Space Walk of Fame museum

[GeneCash]

A while ago, I saw a story in the paper of a "local space museum moving to bigger site" and it was a place I'd never heard of, so I decided to check them out. Well, that was a couple months ago, and I finally got off my fat green butt and headed over there Saturday morning.

This place is quite a jewel. It's a *very* small operation, but it's got stuff I've never seen in person before.

It has the entire set of Complex 36A Atlas/Centaur launch consoles, rescued and refurbished by one of the guys that used to maintain them. He is a guide and explained how it all worked, complete with a demonstration of a launch by the Mod IV Sequencer that he'd synced to a DVD of the actual last launch it performed.

Unlike most displays, they're perfectly fine with you walking up and flipping all the switches and pushing all the buttons. They even encourage it.

They have an enormous model of the Complex 39A pad, complete with crawler, mobile launch platform, Shuttle, launch tower, and rotating service structure. It takes up an entire room, and is bigger than 1/72 scale.

Remember all the drawings/pics of the ORIGINAL 1963 Lunar Module design? The one with 5 legs, a round front hatch, and a bulbous shape with large glass windows? I've seen that for years, but they have the model!

They also have a "Russian room" with a Sokol suit and Russian memorabilia, including a poster of all the cosmonauts. Of course it's all in Cyrillic writing, so I wasn't able to tell much. Even after all these years, it still feels weird to look at Russian stuff.

The major donor was a KSC fire crewman for many years, so there is a room with lots of his stuff in it. His crew was at a Shuttle launch tending the M113 emergency vehicle. Mission control told them the launch was on hold, and gave them permission to get out and stretch the legs. Mission control DID NOT tell them the launch was resumed, so there's a pic of them standing there OUTSIDE the M113 when KABOOM the Shuttle launches. They got in a lot of trouble until they were able to prove no one told them about the count starting back up.

They're over in Titusville, Florida, and their website is http://www.spacewalkoffame.com/

The $5 buck admission gets you a lot of neat stuff to look at.

There is also a park nearby with mission memorials. I'm going back today (Monday) to check out the park and see the SpaceX launch from there.

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[Dodgey]

Wow that's amazing, if I ever get over to Florida from Australia I'll have to remember to check it out. I hope that it doesn't just fade into nothing from lack of attention.