posted 04-15-2009 02:17 AM            

Robert Pearlman, the 33 year old collector who runs CollectSPACE, caught the bug from Havekotte. Pearlman saw a story about the collector in a newspaper, his artifacts arrayed behind him, and sent the older man a letter. It just so happened that Havekotte had a long standing policy of providing a "free packet of space goodies to avid space fans," and so one day a package showed up at Pearlman's door.

"I wrote to him and said, 'How do I get started in this?' And he sent me a big box of stuff," Pearlman said. "I still have most of the contents of that box. I was 13 or 14 years old."

Alongside the collectibles was a piece of wisdom that helped Pearlman find his particular niche.

"It had a note from him that said to look through the box, find what excites me, and then specialize," Pearlman said. "What really struck my fancy were the small bits and pieces that had been in space. A couple tiny little pieces of the Apollo 13 command module heat shields and some gold-covered foil that had covered the Soyuz test module."

Pearlman had discovered that he was a hardware man.

The jewel of Pearlman's collection is a hatch manufactured for the International Space Station -- "a 4-foot-by-4-foot, 200-pound aircraft-grade piece of aluminum" -- which one of his collector buddies found at a recycling center in Alabama.

"He called me and said, 'You won't believe what I found.' I had it trucked down to Houston, where I am," Pearlman said. "I live on the third floor of a walkup. I had to call four companies to find someone who was willing to help me move it."

posted 04-15-2009 09:49 AM               

I had to call four companies to find someone who was willing to help me move it.

posted 04-15-2009 12:17 PM               

You should make a coffee table out of it. Get a stand to support the hatch. Then cover the hatch with impact resistant plate glass.

Or better yet make it an acrylic top with ISS mission pins embetted around the perimeter.

Tim

posted 04-15-2009 12:33 PM               

quote:

---

Originally posted by thump:
Did any of the movers ask, "What the heck is that???"

---

Before the hatch was moved upstairs however, the hatch did elicit some double takes by those who drove by. One, who obviously worked at Johnson Space Center, rolled down a window and asked, "Is that?" to which I replied, "It is." ...and then with a smile, he continued down the road.