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Ed Smylie, Who Saved the Apollo 13 Crew with Duct Tape, Dies at 95

(www.nytimes.com)
105 points sohkamyung | 2 comments | 16 May 25 14:03 UTC | HN request time: 0.762s | source
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AshleyGrant ◴[16 May 25 15:33 UTC] No.44006699[source]▶
If you ever have the opportunity, visit the Cosmosphere in Hutchinson, Kansas. They have the actual Apollo 13 Command Module on display.
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alabastervlog ◴[16 May 25 16:05 UTC] No.44007073[source]▶
FWIW I find it to be a much better museum than the more-famous one in Huntsville, AL. That one's badly run-down and is about 50% some kind of gross defense contractor permanent trade-show installation—though the blown-apart Saturn V they've got suspended in a hangar is notably amazing to see.

The Cosmosphere's got a more impressive collection (though that Saturn V makes up a lot of ground for Huntsville) and the presentation is much better.

There's an OK zoo (great, adjusting for where it is, really) nearby, worth a stop if you're there with kids anyway, but not much else I know of in the area. It's weird that there's such a good museum so far from everything, including from the most-traveled highway through-routes for the state.

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1. strifey ◴[16 May 25 18:04 UTC] No.44008247[source]▶
Sad to hear about how much the Space & Rocket center has been let to deteriorate. That place really sparked my interest in science & engineering as a child. Even went to Space Camp there way back in the day.
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2. alabastervlog ◴[16 May 25 18:21 UTC] No.44008393[source]▶
Yeah, I remember going as a kid (the Saturn V and "rocket garden" are what stuck with me and how I realized I'd been there before) and thinking it was great, but going again a couple years ago it was a huge let-down. So much of it was just ugly MIC sales powerpoint infographics with not-great accompanying displays of missiles and such, there was a whole area that seemed to just be a warfare drone military contractor showroom (which could be cool, but the presentation was about as boring as possible in this case), a bunch of the interactive bits were broken, most of the handful still working cost extra (and admission was not what I'd call cheap), and in general it just felt like a place struggling to survive. It gave an almost ex-Warsaw-Pact vibe of being well past its prime and decaying in place. The Saturn V is still amazing, though, but even there the little bit of the hangar floor and wall space that they actually bothered to use was given over to kinda-lame material about things like the SLS that also had a strong "this came straight from a contractor's marketing department" feeling.

I'd also been to the Cosmosphere as a kid (the SR-71 in the lobby is how I recognized that one when I returned, haha, don't see that every day) and have been about three more times over the last 15 years, as an adult, and it's still great.