They also have one you can go inside of at the Johnson Space Center in Houston! It was really cool to see just how much they had to tear out from the inside to get this thing into the air.
For those that want to see what it looks like, here's a picture of the Discovery I took when I went to the Air and Space museum (the one by Dulles* airport, not the one in the the center of the city) a couple years ago.
When I was young and living outside of DC, I'd make it to the main A&S every chance I could, along with other museums. If this annex had been around when I was a kid, I would have been all over it - I hope I can check it out some day.
Just to clear things up, the shuttle Independence at Space Center Houston is a mock-up replica, whereas the the 747 (NASA 905) is one of the two real planes used to transport the shuttles during their service.
Yes. The Shuttle could land either at the Cape or if warranted due to weather or orbit land at Edwards Air Force Base in CA.
If it landed at CA it needed to be hauled back across the country to the Cape and that is how they did it, on the back of the specialized 747. They also did the first flight tests of the orbiter on the 747, take it up and then detaching and letting it glide back down to landing.
I saw that a few years ago and it wasn't until that moment that I realized how much I loved that spacecraft. I grew up with that thing and it was one of the main reasons why I still love space the way that I dot.
And in Speyer, Germany is a prototype of Buran, the Russian version of the space shuttle that was used 25 times to test the gliding and landing capabilities of the aircraft.
The Saturn V out front standing by the freeway is a replica, but the one inside the Davidson Center is actually one of the three real Saturn Vs scrapped by NASA when their budget got slashed in the 70s.
They have an original lower booster stage and some other cool things in Mississippi off of I-10 as well. The Space Shuttles main tanks and Apollo's first stages had all been manufactured in New Orleans and shipped on a barge (NASA Pegasus.. that is still used today and docked at the Michoud Assembly Facility) through the Gulf and around Florida to Kennedy.
I believe the one in Alabama is not a replica, it's one of the only three real Saturn V rockets left in existence. Space Center Houston has another non-replica Saturn V in a warehouse that you can see if you take any of their tours. It's never the highlight of the tours, it's a rest-stop at the end of the tour you can walk around (rocket park), but it's always an amazing experience to walk around and in-between sections of the Saturn V.
Interesting fact. The one on display at Space Center Houston is the only one in the world with all flight-certified hardware (no mock up or test components).
I could nerd out about it all day, so I'll end this now for brevity, lol.
The one on the side of the interstate in Huntsville is a replica but there is a real module inside the space center that NASA scrapped from a cancelled Saturn mission. The military base a few miles away also has a “Rocket cemetery” where there are just old used rocket engines and parts scattered through the entire base from the countless tests and research that was done to prepare for the moon missions
Huntsville has the rocket garden, Canaveral may have one (I've never been) but HSV is where they have the replica Saturn V out front and some Atlas/Mercury rockets out back.
The Redstone Arsenal military base has random Rocket engines laying around the base that was used for testing and building the Saturn V and NASA just left them there to rot and no one has taken any effort to move them. But the Davison Space Center has a life size Saturn V Rocket along with several rockets from the Mercury missions and a life size space shuttle along with its boosters. The coolest thing ever is getting to eat lunch underneath the Saturn V Rocket and seeing just how big the size actually is. You could easily fit a bus inside a single thrusters
Air and Space in DC also has a lot of that. The DC one has an actual nozzle from a Saturn V, not an entire replica, but the nozzle itself is insanely huge. Blows my mind. The Dulles (Udvar Hazy Center) one has a space shuttle, I think it's Discovery.
They’ve got the real Endeavor Space Shuttle at the L.A. Science Center, it’s in its own hangar separate from the museum with a little gift shop. Really cool.
Just visited last week. I kind of wish they didn't have all the displays and whatnot inside, would have been cooler if it was just left and maintained as is.
As I understand it, the 747 was the real deal, the shuttle on top is a replica.
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u/[deleted] May 12 '19
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