| Article 1567
From: [email protected]
Newsgroups: clari.tw.space,clari.tw.science
Subject: Groundbreaking for $70 million Space Center Houston
Date: 28 May 91 20:48:11 GMT
HOUSTON (UPI) -- Ground was broken Tuesday for the $70 million
Space Center Houston, a high-tech, hands-on facility designed to give
visitors their closest glimpse yet of life as an astronaut.
Backers hope the center, designed by Walt Disney Imagineering,
will re-ignite Americans' excitement about space exploration and the
nation's space program.
The 183,000-square-foot Space Center Houston, financed by the
sale of tax-exempt bonds, will be built just outside Johnson Space
Center, south of Houston. Opening is scheduled for fall 1992.
Space Center Houston is designed to give visitors a feel for
both the physical and intellectual challenges of space exploration,
organizers said. It is expected to attract up to 3 million visitors a
year and produce an annual economic impact of $100 million.
``Space Center Houston will be an 'experience center' unlike
anything else in the world,'' said Harold Stall, president of Manned
Space Flight Education Foundation Inc. ``It will be a truly unique area
where people can actually touch, experience and identify with space.''
Space Center Houston will feature a simulated work station to
give visitors a sense of what a day's work aboard NASA's proposed
space station will be like. Tourists also will be able to operate
hands-on simulations of manned maneuvering units, try on space helmets
and put their hands into pressurized space gloves.
A Mission Status Center will provide a behind-the-scenes view
of astronauts and NASA flight controllers at work by providing live
video from the Kennedy Space Center launch pad, mission control in
Houston and live pictures from space during shuttle flights.
Visitors also will be able to climb aboard a full-scale
duplicate of the mid-deck and flight-deck areas of the space shuttle.
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| Article: 2746
From: [email protected] (PAULA DITTRICK)
Newsgroups: clari.news.features,clari.tw.space
Subject: Space Center visitors crash-land flight simulator
Date: Fri, 2 Oct 92 9:47:16 PDT
_U_P_I _N_e_w_s_F_e_a_t_u_r_e
SPACE CENTER HOUSTON, Texas (UPI) -- It's not easy landing the space
shuttle -- just ask 320 students and 200 journalists who recently got a
sneak preview of the $70 million Space Center Houston vistors center,
which opens Oct. 16.
Even an IBM executive who successfully negotiated a landing in a NASA
flight simulator was unable to do the same on the landing simulators in
the IBM-sponsored Feel of Space display within the visitors center.
Tony Macina, vice president and general manager of IBM Federal
Systems Co., eagerly coached kids and reporters for several minutes but
everyone, including himself, crashed.
He said the visitor center's landing simulators are very similar to
the flight simulators that astronauts use for training. He helped build
the computer software that runs the flight simulators the astronauts use.
``These things are very close, very close,'' Macina said of the
visitor center's simulators. ``They had an astronaut in here and he
landed...it's not easy. I actually flew the (NASA) simulator in. I've
crashed this one twice.''
The center's landing simulators are only one of numerous displays
that give visitors a hands-on experience for the difficulties facing
astronauts going to work in space.
``I was always a space jockey. I wanted to be an astronaut, a fighter
pilot but my eyes weren't good enough so I became an aerospace engineer,''
Macina said. ``It's great fun. You get to work your dreams.''
That's precisely the concept that prompted IMB to join a list of
corporate sponsors who financed displays within Space Center Houston.
Other display sponsors are Southwestern Bell, Du Pont and Eastman
Kodak Co.
``They, like we, need more bright young people with excellent
educations in their fields in order to maintain an edge in technological
leadership,'' said Hal Stall, president of Space Center Houston.
The center occupies 123 acres on the southwest corner of the Johnson
Space Center, which is about 25 miles south of downtown Houston. The old
visitors center within Building 2 of the JSC campus is being turned into
an employee activity center.
The new 183,000-square-foot entertainment and education complex was
financed with $5.1 million in private contributions and $68.4 million in
tax-exempt bonds.
The non-profit Manned Space Flight Education Foundation will
run the center, which is to self-sustaining out of its revenues and
corporate donations.
Southwestern Bell provided the Mission Status Center, which provides
visitors with updated information whenever a shuttle mission is in progress.
``Southwestern Bell's future workforce is in today's classrooms,''
said Wayne Alexander, company vice president. ``High-tech experience
centers, like Space Center Houston, offer our young people a glimpse
into the future, a future full of opportunites for those who are well
prepared.''
Upon entering the Disney-designed visitors center, guests may wonder
whether they somehow were beamed into a space movie complete with music
reminiscent of ``Star Wars.''
Workers wearing blue flight suits can be see throughout the center
answering the questions of visitors as they wander through the Space
Center Plaza, an enormous central atrium, toward the various displays of
their choice.
Du Pont sponsored the Starship Gallery, housing space artifacts and
the largest exhibit of moon rocks on Earth, including one moon rock that
visitors may touch.
The gallery also includes a theater featuring the ``On Human Destiny''
film, which outlines the highs and lows of manned space travel, complete
with footage of the tragic Challenger blast.
``Our support of Space Center Houston is consistent with the
company's on-going commitment to science literacy and the aerospace
industry,'' said J. Michael Bowman, vice president of Du Pont advanced
materials systems.
Eastman Kodak sponsored the Picture Yourself display, a high-tech
camera devise that digitally transposes vistors into a space setting and
snaps a souvenir photo.
A second theater presents a large-format film ``To Be an Astronaut''
that follows astronaut candidates through training, blast off and into
space. Future space-related IMAX films will premiere on this theater's
five-story-high screen.
The NASA tram tour takes guests on a behind-the-scenes tour of
Johnson Space Center where, among other things, they will see the
Weightless Environment Training Facility, Mission Control Center and
Rocket Park, the outdoor display of retired flight hardware too huge to
be housed indoors.
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| From: US4RMC::"[email protected]" "Kevin C. Marsh" 25-MAY-1994
To: [email protected]
CC:
Subj: JSC Images on the Internet
The Image Sciences Division of NASA's Johnson Space Center is pleased
to announce that our digital image collection is now accessible on the
Internet. This collection includes press release and Earth
observation images from the manned space program from Mercury to the
present. All press release images (c. 9,000 image files) are
currently available, but for Earth observation only the STS-60 images
have been loaded (c. 4,500 image files). These images can be accessed
using the File Transfer Protocol (FTP), Gopher, and World Wide Web
(WWW) information sharing protocols over the Internet. Each of these
protocols will provide access to our JPEG images (average 40k each)
and the text files that describe them.
In the next year we plan to load an additional 200,000 Earth
observation images. We will also load each mission's press release
images as they are selected.
URLs:
FTP://139.169.29.11 (login as anonymous)
Gopher://139.169.29.11:70/
http://139.169.29.11/html/home.htm
Further information regarding the availability of these images through
the Internet can be obtained from the Customer Services Office in the
Image Sciences Division. Contact Kevin Marsh at ([email protected]).
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