April 4th, 2018: Boilerplate

[xoxoxoBruce]

JFK speaking at Rice University on September 12th, 1962;

To be sure, all this costs us all a good deal of money. This year's space budget is three times what it was in January 1961, and it is greater than the space budget of the previous eight years combined. That budget now stands at $5,400 million a year--a staggering sum, though somewhat less than we pay for cigarettes and cigars every year. Space expenditures will soon rise some more, from 40 cents per person per week to more than 50 cents a week for every man, woman and child in the United States, for we have given this program a high national priority--even though I realize that this is in some measure an act of faith and vision, for we do not now know what benefits await us.

However, I think we're going to do it, and I think that we must pay what needs to be paid. I don't think we ought to waste any money, but I think we ought to do the job. And this will be done in the decade of the sixties. It may be done while some of you are still here at school at this college and university. It will be done during the term of office of some of the people who sit here on this platform. But it will be done. And it will be done before the end of this decade.

And spend we did, there were thirty-eleventeen things going on at any point in time.
Some of them revealed what would work, and some revealed what wouldn’t.
One of the learning tools was mockups.

A boilerplate is a mockup of a space capsule design used in simulations. After testing, many boilerplates were sold off for scrap. It was in a Grove City scrapyard that Kim Rogers, owner of the Dairy Queen in Franklin along Pennsylvania Route 8 and space travel enthusiast, found two boilerplates from the Apollo command module in the early 80s. He bought one and transported the 3-ton piece of spaceflight history up to his franchise location, and mounted it in front of the building.

Years later a former Navy man recognized the boilerplate as the same one he had used for underwater demolition training in preparation for the Apollo missions. It was the same model they rescued from the Apollo 16 mission.
Inside the building are monitors with video telling the story of the boilerplate and how it came to rest at his family’s Dairy Queen for over 30 years. That and, of course, ice cream.

Mmmm... ice cream.


link

[Carruthers]

I was fascinated by the Apollo project and remain so to this day.
The Apollo 10 CSM has been on display in the Science Museum in London since 1976 and is on extended loan from the Smithsonian.



It's years since I visited the museum but recall that the module was on a small plinth which made it close enough to touch.
I doubt that's possible now and any attempt to do so would probably be frowned upon. At the very least.

[xoxoxoBruce]

What, and miss the opportunity to record a facial recognition quality photograph AND related fingerprints? MI6 is slipping.

[Gravdigr]

Yeahyeah, space stuff.

Two peanut buster parfaits, please.

What?

No, just me. Now stand back.