posted 04-28-2011 06:58 PM               

American Restoration
Space Kowboy

Premiere Date: 04/29/2011

Rick and his team are given a crucial mission, completely restore a NASA helmet from the 1960s' Gemini missions. Will this project launch them out of this world, or will a fire cause them to call Houston with a problem?

Michael Schario of Jackson Township made space history. He's one of the few Americans to own a NASA space program helmet.

Schario is going to show off the restored relic of the space race on the "American Restoration" show on The History Channel. The program will be televised at 10 p.m. Friday and again at 8 p.m. May 9.

The authentic NASA helmet never made it into space, notes Schario. But it came close.

Helmets were handmade early in the American space program, he said.

"Engineers designed helmets and built them, and then they'd take them up in airplanes, almost to space, and test them," he said. "The ones that didn't make the grade for space flight were used by fuel handlers."

An authority on space program equipment told Schario his was a "hand-me-down" helmet used by NASA fuel handlers for launching Mercury, Gemini and Apollo spacecraft. Schario learned from NASA officials that few of such helmets still exist. Some were sent to museums at the end of the Apollo program, and the rest were to be destroyed.