Ordinarily, I don’t link to TWP stories, since I don’t want to turn the site into a propaganda piece for the Post, but to me, this one is just too cool to pass up:
Retro Rocket — The Saturn V Took America to the Moon. Now It’s Taking Us to the Museum.
I was born in 1971, two years after Apollo 11 and two years before the Saturn V’s final flight, so I’ve regrettably never seen one in action. I have seen one in person though, at the space center which bears my name. (Come to think of it, it was nineteen years ago this month that I was there, visiting with my father and stepmother. At the time, two Space Shuttles were on the pads, a rare occurrence. Unhappily, neither one of them still exist.)
At any rate, the Post article mentions that the few remaining Saturn V rockets are finally being restored, through a combination of NASA funding, private investment, fundraising, and guilt.
“Saturn V is a key artifact of the space race. If you wanted to pick one object to describe the era, that would be it,” says Allan A. Needell, manned spaceflight curator at the Smithsonian Institution’s Air and Space Museum. “I don’t think you can overestimate its importance. There will never be anything like it again.”
I would be ecstatic if NASM could somehow get hold of one to display at the thoroughly astounding Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, the museum’s new annex south of Dulles International Airport in Virginia. There’s certainly room for it!
Under a 1960s agreement, the Smithsonian has the right of first refusal for anything NASA wants to throw away, and “there was just a ton of stuff from Apollo,” Needell says. “Everyone agreed the Saturn V’s were historic objects, but we didn’t have anyplace to put them, and we didn’t have the resources to oversee them.”
One can only hope. In the meantime, it’s good to know that one of the most important artifacts of what might very well be humanity’s greatest achievement will finally be preserved for future generations to marvel.
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