posted 04-14-2008 03:42 PM               

The work that Nelson Weber and his colleagues at the McDonnell Aircraft Corp. were doing 46 years ago to build the Gemini space capsule was so important that President John F. Kennedy took a trip to St. Louis to congratulate them.

"I can imagine no action, no adventure which is more essential and more exciting than being involved in the most important and significant adventure that any man has been able to participate in in the history of the world," Kennedy said as he toured the Gemini construction site on Sept. 12, 1962.

Yet, in the years since, the role McDonnell employees such as Weber played in the country's space program has been largely forgotten.

"Even people in St. Louis don't know this is where the first space capsules were built," said Weber, a retired fuel cell engineer.

Craig Hadley, a University of Missouri-St. Louis graduate student working on his master's project in museum studies, has made a serious effort to document the histories of the workers who helped build those capsules. The result of his eight-month project is a new exhibit at UMSL's Thomas Jefferson Library.

The exhibit was opened Friday at a small reception that was attended by several former McDonnell employees, including Weber. Hadley hopes people will see his project and understand what Weber and his colleagues accomplished.

posted 03-24-2009 07:19 AM               

"The St. Louis Gemini Story," an exhibit that shows Missouri's history of involvement in the space race, is on display at the State Historical Society of Missouri.

The exhibit illustrates the main themes and events of NASA's Project Gemini. The project was conducted from 1963 to 1966 to practice and test procedures necessary to meet then-President John F. Kennedy's challenge to have an astronaut land on the moon before the end of the decade.

Although the Gemini's involvement in the space race is a major theme in the exhibit, it's important to Missouri history as well.

"What was fun about this exhibit was discovering how involved Missouri was in the space race," said Joan Stack, curator of art collections at the State Historical Society of Missouri.