First Public Shuttle Engine Test

Guppy06 writes: "NASA's John C. Stennis Space Center (Mississippi, near the gulf coast) will be opening its doors to the public for the first time this Saturday. As part of its celebrations of the 20th anniversary of the first space shuttle launch (as well as flight-certifying a Pratt & Whitney fuel turbo pump), there'll be a 520-second static test of an SSME around 2000 CDT. Translating that into English for the non space geeks, that means they'll be lighting up a space shuttle main engine (attatched to a large steel frame, grounded in a big chunk of concrete so it doesn't go anywhere) for about 9 minutes around 8:00. The press release is available here. Now if only they did stuff like this more often, there might be more interest in NASA ..."