FFrench
Member Posts: 3161
From: San Diego
Registered: Feb 2002
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posted 07-02-2010 10:28 PM
  
On a road trip through New Mexico and Arizona on the way back from an event in Colorado, I enjoyed visiting some of the great space-related places along the way. The New Mexico Museum of Space History is a fantastic high point familiar to most here, I am sure (although it was a particular pleasure to see the British Starchaser rocket sitting outside the museum, a long way from home), but I thought I would mention a little about some of the other places along the way. |
FFrench
Member Posts: 3161
From: San Diego
Registered: Feb 2002
|
posted 07-02-2010 10:30 PM
The Roswell Museum and Art Center is a world-class art and history museum, which also has two galleries of particular interest to the space enthusiast. One is a gallery dedicated to Apollo astronaut (and former New Mexico Senator) Harrison Schmitt. Judging by the postcards for sale they used to have his space suit on display, but now they have his flown flight suit and other Apollo-17-flown items. They also have New Mexico's official Apollo 17 moon rock. In a fascinating juxtaposition, right next to Schmitt's gallery is a reassembly of rocket pioneer Robert Goddard's rocket workshop.  
It was one of the most atmospheric and moving immersive exhibitions I have been into in a while - especially when viewing footage of the rocket experiments Goddard did in that region. To see the size of the rockets in his workshop really gave me a true sense of how advanced his work was. |
FFrench
Member Posts: 3161
From: San Diego
Registered: Feb 2002
|
posted 07-02-2010 10:32 PM
 The White Sands area is one of stunning natural beauty, a fair share of Space-Race-era motels with great old neon signs - and of course the landing site of the space shuttle on one occasion. The White Sands Missile Range Museum has an impressive rocket park with an Orion escape system mockup, a Redstone, and a Viking Mars aeroshell. The museum encapsulates a great deal of the rocket history that took place there over many decades, but by far the outstanding exhibition was a building dedicated to housing a completely refurbished V-2 rocket.
Like the Saturn V displays around the country, this example had been on outside display, and in recent years the rocket was removed, completely refurbished and repainted, and placed in protected indoor building. I was surprised to find that the experience was in many ways just as impressive as visiting those Saturn V buildings. Instead of a old, retired rocket, the freshly-painted V-2 seemed like a new, working, active piece of hardware, with a real sense of power. Lying on its side, it seemed much larger than the examples I have seen that stand upright. It looked enormous. Just like Goddard's rockets, I gained a real appreciation for the size and sheer power of this advanced rocket, and how far rocketry had advanced in such a short time period.
I expected to be wowed when I walked into the buildings housing Saturn V rockets. I did not expect to have such a similar reaction seeing a V-2. Outstanding exhibition. Just across the mountain pass, on the road down into Las Cruces, was an unexpected discovery - the Space Murals Inc. Museum & Gift Shop. Apparently the owners of the local water company decided to paint a water tank to commemorate space history - and they did. They had so many questions about it from the public, the person in the museum told me, that they then decided to open a museum to display space history items. It reminded me a little of the Space Walk of Fame Museum in Titusville - a wonderfully homegrown feeling, with many personal mementoes and souvenirs mixed in with flown items and other hardware. A fun place I wish I'd had time to explore. I noted a number of familiar names from this site as listed donors to their collection.
In its sweep of space history, from Goddard's experiments, through the von Braun team's rocket tests, to work on Apollo, shuttle and Orion, the region has a pretty unbeatable space legacy set against some very dramatic natural backdrops. I'd definitely recommend it as a road trip. |
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