Kansas and the Cosmos

By Dan Leeth

> German Gallery
> Cold War Gallery
> Early Spaceflight Gallery
> Apollo Gallery
> Programs at the Cosmosphere
> If you go

Apollo XIII command module. © Dan Leeth.

NASA should have known that a mission numbered 13 was bound for trouble. And so it happened with Apollo XIII. This trip to land men on the moon launched April 11, 1970, and for two days, everything went peachy. Then on the 13th, some 200,000 frequent-flyer miles from Earth, an explosion ripped the spacecraft’s life-sustaining service module.

"Houston, we’ve had a problem," radioed Commander James Lovell.

In NASA’s most successful failure, the wounded spacecraft whipped around the moon with the crew of three sheltering in a lunar lander built for two. They had air, but water and power stood in critically short supply. The trio returned to the command module for reentry, finally splashing down in the Pacific. Their Hollywood-worthy survival tale can be seen in "Apollo 13," starring Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon and Bill Paxton.

And what about the actual spacecraft the astronauts rode to safety? It can be seen in Kansas.

The Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center stands in Hutchinson, a 40,000-inhabitant city northwest of Wichita. Here, near the wheat fields from which Dorothy blew to Oz, lies the largest collection of American space treasures outside the Smithsonian and the largest collection of Russian space artifacts this side of Moscow. The linked galleries of its Hall of Space Museum launch visitors on a visual journey through the history of space travel.

German Galleryry

By the 13th century, the Chinese had invented gunpowder-powered arrows, but it wasn’t until the early 20th century that modern rocketry truly blasted off. The Russians advanced theory, and America’s Dr. Robert Goddard launched the world’s first liquid-fueled rocket, but it was World War II’s Nazis who really fired things up.

Hanging in the German Gallery is an actual V-1 "buzz-bomb," so named because of the racket its pulse-jet engine produced. To the side lies a V-2 rocket capable of carrying a one-ton warhead from Germany to England. These missiles’ Channel-crossing trajectories took them 50 miles skyward, making V-2s the first earthly vehicles to penetrate space.

At war’s end, the U.S. and U.S.S.R. each tried to capture as much German rocketry know-how as possible. The Soviets got the engineers, and the Americans secured the scientists.

Cold War Gallery

Passing opposing statues of Lenin and Uncle Sam, visitors advance to the Cold War Gallery. Dominating the first part of the room is Glamorous Glennis, "The Right Stuff" movie replica of the Bell X-1 rocket plane that first broke the sound barrier in 1947. Around the corner sits the rocket sled, Sonic Wind II, which tested the effects of rapid acceleration and deceleration. Photos show a Superman-wannabe aboard the first Sonic Wind, screaming faster than a speeding bullet.

While Americans advanced speed, the Soviets aimed upward. In 1957, they launched Earth’s first man-made satellite, Sputnik I. A flight-ready backup of this radio-beeping ball hangs in the Cosmosphere. Nearby stands an engineering model of Sputnik II, the Russian satellite that carried a dog into space a month after the first Sputnik.

The first U.S. satellite attempt came at the end of the same year. Unlike the secretive Soviets, the Americans invited the world to witness the launch. What people saw was a missile explode and its Vanguard satellite bounce into the bushes. The Cosmosphere displays a flight-ready backup of the original Vanguard.

Running a lap behind in the space race, President Kennedy boldly announced in 1961 that Americans would land a man on the moon by the end of the decade. It seemed a daring boast, considering only 10 months earlier the country’s first unmanned Mercury capsule blew to smithereens on launch. A display case holds its mangled remains.

Early Spaceflight Gallery

It was the Russians who first launched a man into space on April 12, 1961. A flown Vostok capsule, similar to the one in which Yuri Gagarin orbited the earth, stands in the Early Spaceflight Gallery.

Across from it rests the Mercury capsule, Liberty Bell 7. After splashing down in the Atlantic, charges prematurely blew the craft’s hatch. Astronaut Gus Grissom escaped, but the capsule sank deeper than the Titanic. It was recovered in 1999 and restored by the Cosmosphere.

An example of the Russian Voskhod spacecraft dominates the center of the gallery. In 1964, Voskhod I carried three cosmonauts on the world’s first group space ride. The following year on Voskhod II, Alexei Leonov took humankind’s first space walk. The unflown capsule on display contains a backup of the airlock he used.

Near the far wall sits Gemini X, a flown example of America’s two-man capsules. This mid-‘60s program had three missions. It would prove humans could survive two weeks in space. It would test rendezvous and docking maneuvers. And finally, it would determine if two human males could stand being cramped together in quarters tighter than flying coach.

Apollo Gallery

In the next gallery visitors come face-to-face with the Apollo program, which landed men on the moon. A scale model of the massive Saturn V moon rocket hangs from the ceiling. With more than three million parts, it represented the most complex machine ever made.

The Cosmosphere holds one of only two remaining Apollo-era white rooms, the prelaunch cubicle through which astronauts entered the capsule. Visitors can try to imagine what the men must have felt climbing onboard a skyscraper-tall tank of explosives and strapping themselves into a vehicle built by the lowest bidder.

In a glass enclosure stands the actual Apollo XIII command module, the craft in which astronauts Lovell, Swigert and Haise landed after their "problem" in space. It’s hard to believe that this symbol of American ingenuity and perseverance sat for years on French soil. Considering the flight a failure, NASA had stripped the command module of its 80,000 internal parts. The shell ended up at a museum near Paris. The Cosmosphere worked with government officials to repatriate the spacecraft and reinstalled its pulled parts.

"It’s now probably the most complete of all of the original flown spacecraft," boasts Cosmosphere president Chris Orwoll.

The gallery also displays a lunar lander. This one served as an NBC News backdrop, allowing anchors Chet Huntley and David Brinkley to show what was happening as Neil Armstrong took that "one giant leap for mankind." A piece of moon rock from the mission shines in a protected case nearby.

With the Cold War thawing in the mid-‘70s, a spirit of cooperation began developing between the Soviets and Americans. The Cosmosphere’s final display shows the 1975 Apollo-Soyuz rendezvous in space, the first shared step toward today’s International Space Station.

Programs at the Cosmosphere

More than a collection of artifacts, the Cosmosphere tries to educate and excite people about space exploration. For many, that begins in Dr. Goddard’s Lab where a museum employee demonstrates how rockets work. School-age kids love watching this modern lab-coated doctor blow things up.

The Cosmosphere offers summer camps for students, ranging from "Investigate Space" programs for second through fourth graders to "Future Astronaut Training" programs for seventh graders and up. Grownups get "Adult Astronaut Adventures" and Elderhostel programs.

The museum also hosts public gatherings featuring authors and astronauts. A landmark event is planned for April 2010 when flight and ground crews from Apollo XIII arrive to celebrate the 40th anniversary of NASA’s most successful failure.

"We’re working on the Hollywood folks, hoping to get them to come as well," relates Orwoll, "but that’s a tougher nut to crack."

Dan Leeth is a freelance writer and photographer based in Aurora.

If you go

The Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center is open Monday–Thursday from 9:00–5:00, Fridays and Saturdays from 9:00–8:00 and Sundays from noon to 5:00. Evening hours expand to 8:00 p.m. daily in summer and during Christmas and spring breaks. Tickets are $15 for adults, $13 for seniors and children ages 3-12, and cover admission to the galleries, one IMAX movie, one planetarium show and one Dr. Goddard’s Lab presentation. For more information call 800-397-0330, visit www.cosmo.org or talk to a AAA travel agent (866-235-7070).

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