![]() The landing gear and payload bay are separate objects, and can easily be removed from the scene if they aren't required. This is a high-resolution model of the Space Shuttle Orbiter (1981-2011).Īll details are physically modeled, including the individual ceramic tiles and thermal blankets. Two tractor-trailers delivered the simulator to NASA in Houston earlier this year, and by mid-November, with more than 4,000 volunteer hours invested so far, the interior of the simulator was completely restored. Finally, then-director of Johnson Space Center Mark Geyer agreed to house the simulator during its reconstruction at the NASA facility, providing a safe place for restorers to meet and work. Carl Brainerd, who managed the simulator for three decades when astronauts trained on it, agreed to supervise its restoration. The Lone Star Flight Museum, located in southeast Houston, near Johnson Space Center, agreed to become the new home for the simulator and provide adequate space for a public display. With their help, the pieces soon began to fall into place for Dunbar. ![]() This would not have happened without Bonnie." "It was an artifact that needed to be preserved. "Starting in 1976, every crew that flew on the shuttle onward trained on this simulator," Abbey said. This "Friends of the Simulator" committee began searching for a final home while raising money to move and restore the simulator. Dunbar was tasked with finding a suitable home for the simulator.Īfter it became clear that Texas A&M did not have the space to refurbish and display the artifact, she enlisted the help of two Houston space legends, former Johnson Space Center directors George Abbey and Gerry Griffin. She had the right blend of expertise as an astronaut and curator, having served as president and CEO of The Museum of Flight in Seattle from 2005 to 2010. It remained there until Dunbar became a professor of engineering at Texas A&M in 2016. The simulator had to be moved into a smaller storage area not amenable to reconstruction work. Unfortunately, shortly after this, the university unexpectedly lost control of this building. Upon reaching the university, the simulator was put into a large building on campus with enough room to reassemble the simulator and put it on display. The bulky simulator, with its extended runs of cables, had to be disassembled for the trip. The chair of the aerospace engineering department at Texas A&M, Dimitris Lagoudas, led the effort to raise $500,000 and move the simulator to the university's campus in 2012. ![]() Texas A&M University sought to keep the full-motion space shuttle simulator, however. ![]() Precious little of the shuttle actually remained in Texas, where the program was managed and its astronauts were trained. If you wanted to go into space, you had to pass the training in the motion simulator."Īfter the space shuttle was retired in 2011, artifacts from the program were sent across the country to various museums. It would vibrate as if you were going through a launch and landed like a shuttle entry. "It was absolutely identical to what we flew," says Bonnie Dunbar, a former NASA astronaut who launched on the space shuttle five times from 1985 to 1998. And even though the simulator was firmly on the ground, anchored inside Building 5 at Johnson Space Center, it offered one hell of a ride. Every NASA astronaut who ever rode aboard the space shuttle, more than 350 of them, first sat in its full-motion simulator.
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