posted 03-15-2014 11:09 AM               

[Earl Mullins, curator, founder and president of the Space Museum in Bonne Terre, which is the parent company of the Explore Space Museum in Branson] said several factors contributed to the downfall, the biggest being a late opening date last season.

"We weren't able to get open until September, even though we started trying last April," he said. "There were also all sorts of regulations we had to go through to get the building up to code as a museum space, and we just weren't expecting it.

"We had never dealt with anything like that before and didn't realize what it was going to take."

Mullins said by the time they got approval to open, the season only had a few months left and the museum never got the opportunity to raise enough funds to carry it through the winter.

"We aren't just a fly-by-night group and we're very serious about what we do," he said. "We were given an opportunity that we knew was a gamble and it just didn't pay off.