The crew compartment trainer, now displayed in the museum’s Cold War Gallery, arrived aboard NASA’s Super Guppy aircraft last month at the Air Force museum from its prior home at Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. The simulator, built by Rockwell International Corp. in 1979, prepared more than 300 astronauts, including 75 from the Air Force, for missions aboard the shuttle fleet between 1981 until 2011.
The trainer will be a centerpiece of the museum’s drive to expand science, technology, engineering and math education through the museum. The exhibit will include a “learning node” or 60-seat amphitheater-style, multimedia classroom, to teach science-related topics.
Workers began reinstalling about 1,500 pounds of equipment, such as squeezing in cockpit seats through narrow hatches, into the crew compartment trainer Friday. The cargo was removed and shipped separately to cut down on the 23,000-pound weight of the shuttle simulator when it was airlifted to the museum’s runway.
By 2015, when construction of a $48 million fourth hangar at the museum is complete, the exhibit will be moved to a new Space Gallery.
Congress set aside $3 million for the transportation and construction of the space shuttle display.
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