Scott And Carol Present - Kennedy Space Center's New Heroes and Legends, Presented by Boeing

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A traditional countdown and a lot of bangs saluted the reopening of the Astronaut Hall of Fame in its new location on the grounds of the Kennedy Space Visitors Center.

Here is the whole crew, including Buzz Aldrin, the last man to walk on the moon. They were all previous members of the Hall of Fame and came to the celebration to honor their peers.
 

Image courtesy of the Kennedy Space Visitors Center 

The 3D imagery is state of the art and the sound system makes you feel like you are there in the moment, whether handling flight operations for an F-86 jet or flying in the Mercury capsule.

 

Eric, from NASA, talks about his organization's support for the project. In the background, you can see the actual Mission Control equipment used in the early space pioneering days.

The silhouette of the X-15 appears to be headed toward the Mercury Redstone. Both of the aircraft were utilized in the early days of space travel and the X-15 built by North American, flown by Neil Armstrong, Joe Engle, and others. Joe Engle also flew the flight testing for the Intrepid shuttle and well as performing the only non-computer aided shuttle landing.

Hall of Fame Astronaut Karol "Bo" Bobko performed much of the baseline and support mission for Skylab, Appolo-Soyuz Test Project, and preparation for the first flight of Columbia, STS-1

This Mercury Sigma 7 actually flew Walter  Shirra Jr for 6 orbits on October 3, 1962. The rocket is an actual human rated Mercury-Redstone 6 that never flew.

 

 

Melissa from Nassal surprises us with her knowledge of trivia about the pods. Each of the nine pods explores different attributes of history-making astronauts, complete with personal artifacts.

 

 

The dramatic entrance into the Astronaut Hall of Fame.

 

Hall of Fame Astronaut Jerry Ross, current record holder for most space launches tells us his tale of what it took to accomplish his stellar career.

In this 360-degree discovery bay, guests attempt to define what is a hero, and one of the best is a young girl who said, "A hero is someone who inspires me to try harder and do my best." Very similar to Gus Grissom when he asked the workers at the Saint Louis McDonnell Aircraft plant to "Do good work," when they were building the Mercury space capsule.

Here Cecil and David, from Falcon Creative, talk about the difficulty of refining the 126 interviews which resulted in too many hours of video and photos into the less than 5 hours of video, and under 8 thousand pictures used in the final production. Not to mention that you are dealing with mankind's greatest accomplishment, so it wouldn't be a good thing for it to be less than perfect.

John from Boeing, the company who helped make this renovation so wonderful took some time to relate how Boeing is celebrating their 100th year, and due to their rich aviation history, they are giving back to keep the legacy of pushing the boundaries of known science further away into the future. A big thank you to Boeing and all the other partners in this magnificent accomplishment.