Newsletters — Current Issues 2011

Southern Colorado Space Museum & Learning Center

Newsletter #11—Space Museum Update January 2011

Greetings everyone, we trust that your New Year is going well. We want to share what we’ve been up to and recognize those who have helped out with our cause lately. Just before Christmas, we headed out on an extensive trip across the country to visit other museum’s and NASA space centers. One of our main goals was to meet with other museum curator’s and directors to get for our project. There’s way too much to put in this newsletter so we will be adding it to the museum’s Facebook page a little at a time for all to see. If you are a Facebook member, we encourage you to visit us, join our cause and keep posted with what we’re up to.
You’ll find us at: http://www.facebook.com/
Or simply search Southern Colorado Space Museum

Here are few statistics on the trip though: 24 days on the road, 5528 miles driven through 10 states, visited 9 space centers and/or museums, and visited ½ dozen other space venues. This was a huge undertaking and there’s no way we could have done it without the help of many others. For example:

• $1800 was donated for the trip by Mr. & Mrs. Lee J. of St. Louis, MO and
       Mr. & Mrs. Dave M. of Canon City, CO
• Rick M. of Spokane WA. donated 3 nights in a luxury condo in Orlando FL while we were
       there to visit Kennedy Space Center
  
• The vehicle for the trip was donated by: Mr. & Mrs. John G. of Canon City, CO
       and Mr. & Mrs. Dave W. of Westcliffe, CO
• Mr. & Mrs. M. V. of Westcliffe, donated the use of a GPS unit that was a big help during the trip

The following Curators/Directors supplied us with passes to their various museums /centers and took us on behind the scenes tours at each place:

• Kristi Church from the Science Museum in OK.
• Paul Spana and Carmina Mortillaro from Space Center Houston
• Irene Willhite and Jamie Willhite of The Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, AL.
• Scott Phillips at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville
• Daniel Gruenbaum from Kennedy Space Center in FL.
• Chris Orwoll at the Cosmosphere in KS.
• Their generosity alone saved us hundreds of dollars and we can’t thank them enough.

Below are some photos like the ones we’ll be putting up on Facebook.

  1. Saturn 1b rocket at AL Welcome Center

  2. Apollo 7 Capsule at Frontiers of Flight Museum in Dallas

  3. The business end of the massive Saturn V that took men to the Moon. This one was in Houston

  4. Outside the Astronaut Hall of Fame in Florida

  5. With Astronaut John Blaha at Kennedy Space Center

Between us, we took around 800 photos and will be posting much more on the Facebook page. We’ll be taking the trip one step at a time with details of each stop, who we met and what we accomplished. We arrived back in CO. with a car full of memorabilia and artifacts that will be displayed in the museum. Thank you to all who helped out in even the smallest way. Stay tuned

Newsletter #12—Space Museum Update July 2011

July 2011 brings great news to our museum friends! After years of searching for a place to set up our exhibit, we have finally succeeded. The Pueblo Weisbod Aircraft Museum here in Colorado has provided space for us in their brand new building. We are so grateful for their help and look forward to a long term relationship with them whether we stay there or move into our own building.
 We started to set up our exhibits on July 9  2011 and are proud to show some of the displays in this newsletter. Here are some of the items that are already on display.

Below is a photo of our Space Shuttle tire that was flown on the orbiter Atlantis on a mission to the International Space Station. 

Next is our Space Shuttle thermal tile display and to commemorate the 42nd anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing, we put together this case of memorabilia.

The air museum is host to one of the Navy’s Seabat helicopters that assisted in the recovery of the Mercury capsule Freedom 7 so we put together this display that sits right in front of that helicopter.

We will be adding more displays and artifacts as time goes on. In the works is a memorial display for our fallen Astronauts of Apollo 1 and the  Challenger and Columbia disasters. You’ll see more photo’s in our next newsletter.
  We want to thank all of you who have contributed to this effort in the past. Every contribution helped us get to this point. We are always in need of any type of space artifact or memorabilia and of course financial contributions continue to be crucial to our continued operation. They can be made right on our website via PayPal at: http://spacemuseum.skymtn.com/help.html or sent to:
        Southern Colorado Space Museum & Learning Center, P.O. Box 204, Westcliffe, Co. 81252
  We are also on the lookout for all types of construction material for display cases, like tempered glass, lighting, wood, castors etc. We need to build many cases like the ones you see in the photos. Mannequins are also a constant need. So keep us in mind when you feel the need to contribute to a good cause. All donations are tax deductible. As always, if you wish not receive these updates, simply send an e-mail to museumcurator@hotmail.com and we will remove you from our list.

     Steve Janssen  <museumcurator@hotmail.com>

To see newsletters from 2009–10, click here.
To see newsletters from 2008, click here.