Triumphs and Tragedies America and Iowa in Space
The Marion Heritage Center's Iowans in Space Presentation and Exhibit
The Marion Heritage Center hosted Triumphs and Tragedies America and Iowa in Space on Saturday January 24th from 11AM to 1:30PM. The event featured a presentation by historian David Wendell as well as an exhibit that featured models of various space crafts, photos from the missions, and a flag that was taken to space on one of the missions.
A group of attendees look at some of the pictures from different missions to space available for viewing at the Marion Heritage Center. The exhibit will remain open until May.
Historian David Wendell speaks to a couple of attendees about some of the items on display at the Marion Heritage Center. Wendell developed an interest in the history of space travel in JR High when his father would bring retired equipment home from Collins Aerospace.
David Wendell tells the crowd about the crew of STX 26 which featured two Iowans (David Hilmers from DeWitt, and Pinkey Nelson born in Charles City), and was the first space flight after the challenger exploded during take-off.
Marion History Center co-founder Victor Klopfenstein watches the presentation by historian David Wendell. Klopfenstein and his wife bought the building that the heritage center is located in in the late nineties before, with funding from the McCloud family, they turned the building into the Marion Heritage Center. He later sold the building to the Marion Heritage Foundation.
David Wendell uses a model of Discovery to show the crowd what happened to the shuttle Columbia upon it’s reentry into Earth’s atmosphere in 2003. The heat absorbing tiles on the shuttle broke apart due to the friction caused by reentering earth’s atmosphere. Dr Laurel Clark who was born in Ames Iowa was among the crew of the doomed mission in which none of the crew survived reentry. Clark was later awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor posthumously.
Sam Dillon from Hiawatha looks at a flag that was taken into space on one of the missions.
David Wendell rings a triangle in remembrance of the astronauts lost during the various missions into space before a moment of silence. Wendell has been hosting this type of event since he was in Highschool, and will also be helping with the Civil War Reenactment in Marion this summer.
Hey, great read as always, it really makes you think about what kind of incredible discoveries and insights we might have now if all that fascinating aerospace equipment David Wendell's father brought home back then had been systematically catalouged and made open source.