Moon Rocket Scrubbed and Blown Dry

loid_void writes "Reutersis is reporting that a giant Apollo moon rocket that never got off the ground is about to get a face-lift after years of rusting away in the Texas heat and humidity at the Johnson Space Center. Workers will construct a shelter for the Saturn V rocket and give it the equivalent of a "blow dry" in the first steps to preserve the relic of NASA's golden age, said Allan Needell, Apollo program curator for the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum. The 363-foot-long behemoth has lain on its side in front of JSC since 1977, a favorite sight of tourists, but also a victim of the elements. Instead of launching astronauts to the moon as it was built to do, it has become a slowly fading hulk of peeling paint and corroded metal where birds live and plants sprout, Needell said on Wednesday during a visit to the rocket. "There's a lot of biology growing on there," he said, pointing out streaks of algae staining the rocket's white skin."

Comments

Jump back!

[TigerTale]

You mean we used to go to the Moon?

NASA's golden age?

[Pi_0's don't shower]

I have to object to referring to the 1960's/70's as NASA's golden age. Surely, that should be regarded as NASA's infancy, and that NASA's golden age may be yet to come? Maybe it's too optimistic, but I'm a 25 year old astrophysics grad student, and I know how much is out there waiting to be explored and examined -- I don't want to have to live my life in the belief that my industry's best days were before I was born!

Re:NASA's golden age?

[cerebralsugar]

It's not too optimistic at all, it just won't be done by NASA. Everyone who has seen Star Trek knows we will have to have a 3rd world war first, and then a drunken scientist resembling James Cromwell will invent warp drive in an alcoholic haze. Then of course, Starfleet will be borne, and we will all want to shag either that vulcan girl and that hot african communications lady.

Re:What a waste

[Nakito]

I'd rather see it broken apart, melted and recycled in more useful form than have a never-used moon rocket sitting in a museum.

Going to the moon may have been the greatest single physical achievement of the human race. There are only three remaining examples of the engine that took us there. This is one of them. I say, let's keep it.

Re:What a waste

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, because the used rockets make such good museum pieces..

But you're right, there's no sense in remembering things from the past. We should have melted down the Spirit of St. Louis, it has no place taking up space in a building.

In fact, that whole Smithsonian thing is such a waste! All that valuable real estate, wasted by useless relics of the past.

.. I really should add something to make it entirely clear I'm being sarcastic.

"Those who don't learn history are doomed to repeat it's mistakes." - paraphrased from someone famous.

YES!

[Sounder40]

I drive past it several times a week (down Saturn Drive for the locals), and it just makes me sick to see it in the shape it's in. Thank God it's finally going to be taken care of and treated as the treasure it is. The pictures don't do justice to the damage being done to the ship.

By the way, as a teenager, I was horrified to hear that they were going to display it on its side. I thought for sure that it was going to be displayed upright. What a dweeb I was (am?). Yeah, that would be great: make it so you could only see the bottom. And then there's the problems it would cause with low-flying aircraft, (lots of them, including those annoying advertizement-pulling planes). Oh, and we get hurricanes down here in these parts.

Re:What a waste

[PPGMD]

Exactly. As a kid I remember standing in front of this rocket at JSC, and saying, "Wow!" Here was the object that took our men to the moon, quite possibly the largest moving vehicle that I have ever seen.

Years later when I was attending Embry-Riddle in Daytona Beach, I flew down to Titusville to see a friend. I went by the KSC during the evening (before the post 9-11 lock down), here in that night, I could almost feel the power, it was almost as moving as when I was a kid.

Without the past, people have nothing to aspire to, for most people what's in the books is simply writing, it's no more real than Lord of the Rings, but if you put a kid in the rocket park down there, history comes alive, here is what you are reading about, not just in words, but in towering moments to the men that rode them.

It inspired me, I would gladly pay for them to be around to inspire future generations.

Re:Kansas Cosmosphere

[daeley]

When you tought of Kansas, you probably didn't think of space now did ya?

Having suffered through several cross-Kansas drives during Summer vacation trips as a kid, I can tell you there is just about nothing *but* space in Kansas. ;)

Saturn V Engines

[Sounder40]

When I was at Marshall Spaceflight Center in Huntsville, Al., they used to test the SSME (Space Shuttle Main Engines) at a test stand a few miles from my building. I was amazed at the power and noise of the SSMEs until an oldtimer told me what it was like when they tested one of the Saturn V engines: He said your coffee cup would literally bounce off of the desk, and forget talking on the phone during a test fire. And that was just the one engine. Imagine what it was like when they all fired at the same time...