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Atlantis Exhibit Opens at KSC Visitors Complex

By Marc Boucher
NASA Watch
June 29, 2013
Filed under ,


Space Shuttle Atlantis – World’s Most Comprehensive Attraction Devoted to NASA’s 30-Year Space Shuttle Program – Opens June 29 at Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex , KSC Visitors Complex
Of the three space-flown orbiters distributed by NASA to science centers and museums throughout the country, only Atlantis is the focal point of a $100 million, 90,000-square-foot attraction containing four multimedia and cinematic productions and more than 60 interactive experiences that invite guests to “be the astronaut” and to celebrate the people, passion and patriotism behind the shuttle program.

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22 responses to “Atlantis Exhibit Opens at KSC Visitors Complex”

  1. stephen says:
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    how long before visitors start tossing coins into the payload bay?

  2. Saturn1300 says:
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    Now that these LEO craft are on display, let the Mars Space Race begin. A Rep. said she would be sorry to see NASA get beat to MARS. Bolden said with SLS they can get there fast. An Orion, ATV and pushed hard to get there in a month or so. They don’t weigh 70 tons, so a 30′ wide tank could carry a lot of fuel. Just keep burning.Don’t go to the Moon orbit, fly by Mars.
    I don’t think Elon will standby and get beat. IM. So there are 3. A good old Space Race.

    • Ben Russell-Gough says:
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      I think you’re being very over-optimistic about what can be done with chemical engines, even with a very, very light crew vehicle.

  3. dogstar29 says:
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    Atlantis coud be flying still, or could have been replaced by a true reusable launch system. We will not see a spacecraft of this sophistication again in my lifetime at least. Instead it was replaced by a huge paper rocket that reminds people of a bygone era when they had a blank check.

    • Steve Whitfield says:
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      If we take things one step further and differentiate between a spacecraft and a space capsule, then Dream Chaser is our only hope of seeing a post-Shuttle manned spacecraft, of any sophistication, within our lifetimes. It seems that most players in the space game would rather timidly reinvent the wheel than attempt to move forward. The word legacy is a double-edged sword.

      • dogstar29 says:
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        The DC is at least an aerodynamic lifting body and a runway lander, but its lift to drag ratio is substantially less than the Shuttle had and of course it has a small fraction of the payload capacity and requires an expendable launch vehicle. So I would agree it is a step beyond a capsule, comparable to the X-37, but not a significant step forward compared to what we once had. To win support for development of a practical reusable launch system requires, first of all, a recognition that it is the only way we will ever see more than a handful of humans in space.

  4. Anonymous says:
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    Wow, that looks nice! They did a good job on displaying it.

  5. Sherye Johnson says:
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    you cant touch it. you cant feel it. you cant look into the cockpit or lower deck. Otherwise, nice display!

    • Anonymous says:
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      True, but it gives a better sense of flight than Discovery @ NASM. (Caveat: I haven’t seen Discovery at Dulles, I’m assuming it’s displayed similarly to how they had Enterprise.)

      • Sherye Johnson says:
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        I think they could have made a ramp through the bay to give everyone an idea of the size. Few people have ever seen the inside of the cockpit or the lower compartment.

        • Steve Pemberton says:
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          Just like you can’t climb inside the Apollo 11 capsule or the Spirit of St. Louis at the National Air & Space Museum, we just have to accept that we’ll never get to go inside the cockpit or the mid-deck of an actual Space Shuttle. For one thing the access is quite difficult, you have to climb into the mid-deck on your hands and knees, then climb a ladder to get into the cockpit. No way they can let thousands of people do that on a daily basis. And no way they are going to cut out part of the cockpit just so people can look inside, no more than they would cut out part of the Apollo 11 capsule or the Spirit of St. Louis to give us a better view.

          That being said, JSC will soon have some displays that will give us at least an idea what it was like inside of a Shuttle. First to open will be the SAIL lab, where you will be able to stand inside of a plexiglass booth inside the cargo bay of OV-95, a wingless, engineless Shuttle which was used as the avionics test bed during the Shuttle program. Although the cargo bay of OV-95 is just exposed wires, it does give you the size perspective of being in the cargo bay.

          Sometime later, the mockup previously known as Explorer, which was at KSC and is now at JSC, will open up again. If you ever saw Explorer at KSC, you were able to walk into the front section of the cargo bay on two levels; behind the cockpit and behind the mid-deck. You could look through plexiglass into the cockpit and mid-deck, and look back into the cargo bay. The only problem was that the cockpit and mid-deck were not very realistic. Supposedly they are planning to gut the interior of Explorer and install a much better high fidelity simulation of the cockpit and mid-deck.

          So between seeing flown Shuttles up close, and seeing OV-95 and Explorer (or whatever they will call it) at JSC, it will be possible for millions of visitors in the coming years to have a good view of the Space Shuttles.

          • Steve Whitfield says:
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            Actually, these days, in our multimedia world, there are a lot of photographs and even video footage of the insides of the Shuttles and the Shuttle bays, so there’s plenty of opportunity to see the insides; we just can’t touch.

        • Sherye Johnson says:
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          Well so much for imagination.

      • Steve Pemberton says:
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        Discovery is parked in the same spot where Enterprise was. The really nice touch to all of this is that the three flown Shuttles will be displayed in the three phases of a space mission. The Udvar-Hazy display represents a Shuttle on the runway after landing. The KSC display represents a Shuttle in space. The Endeavour display at the Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center will represent a Shuttle at launch, in vertical orientation stacked with solids and ET.

    • hikingmike says:
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      Yeah I’d want to touch it too, something that’s been in orbit as much as it has, but it makes sense not to allow people to touch it. Maybe they could have a part that had been up in lots of missions off to the side that you could touch.

  6. Spacetech says:
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    $100 million dollars for a brand new facility and $50 bucks per head admission?
    Atlantis should have gone to Wright Patterson where it already had a space for display and could be viewed for FREE everyday!

    • Anonymous says:
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      Whoa! I’d like to revise and extend my remarks. $50?! $180 if my family of four wants to see it ($40 for kids)?! That’s crazy.

      Still, it does look good. 🙂

  7. Littrow says:
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    Very nicely done KSC and Delaware North!

    This is a great tribute to the engineers of the post-Apollo period who developed the magnificent machine in the 1970s, but it is also a monument to what NASA became in the last 3 decades-focused only on “operational missions” and no interest at all in the R&D to try and improve on the vehicle’s safety or to improve on efficiency. A major lost opportunity that now has the future of the NASA human space program in jeapardy.

  8. Michael Spencer says:
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    A bittersweet symbol for sure, a symbol in many ways of what might be. The orbiter program is the accomplishment off a great nation, if only we had our collective head screwed on correctly. We are so incredibly, stunningly rich and yet we fritter away our money on foreign excursions and unrealistic defense.

    And, yea, it’s cool as hell. I live in Florida and will at some point suck it up and pay the $50. And weep, as I contemplate this stunning achievement wondering what is happening to our great nation.

  9. The Tinfoil Tricorn says:
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    It’s hard to think of it as a big deal, my Dad was working on the cockpit avionics upgrade before the shuttles were sent to the bone yard.. NASA realized to do it right they would have to rebuild the shuttles airframe and all. Keep in mind the stress levels on the shuttles were magnitudes greater than any earthly aircraft. As it was, sitting in the cockpit was like sitting at an old 60’s era data terminal, every system had it’s on individual light and switch. Some minor changes had been made but nothing equivalent to the current standards in commercial Aviation, the shuttles were failing to be on the cutting edge of R&D and the whole cape launching tower and signal systems were corroding into oblivion and needed replacement. So for now private firms are working with the government to R&D all kinds of systems, with new manufacturing systems, once a CAD design is worked out it can take weeks to build something extremely complex. There will be a next gen space bus, but it’s less and less likely that people will be launched with the payloads, the newer control systems take much of the complicated guesswork out of space docking. I gather this from the 2 full days I spent at the Moon mars and beyond conference at JSC in 2005, I listened to all the departments presentations. Right now what’s needed is a very efficient heavy lift vehicle and there’s a lot of infighting about what that system will be again it may be a private R&D program with government subsidization that does it. Of course if you know much about NASA culture, contractors do most of the R&D anyhow just look up United Space Alliance.

  10. Littrow says:
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    Teslanedison said “Of course if you know much about NASA culture, contractors do most of the R&D anyhow just look up United Space Alliance.”

    USA was a recent invention-started in 1986 specifically to take over ‘commercial’ operation of Shuttle so that NASA could refocus on R&D. NASA (some elements within NASA) wouldn’t let go. There was no commercial operation-the only one paying to fly Shuttles especially in the wake of Challenger was NASA. So little to no R&D, and a ‘commercial operator’ wanting to soak the government for every dollar they could get. No improvements to the technology and no gains to the operational efficiency.

    • Littrow says:
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      In fact the contract that USA was put in place to support was called STSOC: Space Transportation System Operations Contract. In time they grew to do more but their prime role was never R&D. Part of the problem was that as the operations organizations took more and more control (and funding) they tried to shift more functions under their direction instead of under the old system of labs that was in place prior to USA and STSOC. R&D never seemed to be an operations specialty.