The Saturn V was the best damn rocket ever. It was a sad day indeed when they cancelled the rest of the moon shots and an even sadder day when we pulled back from aggressive exploration to phaff around in low earth orbit.
One of the last remaining Saturn Fives is rusting away. The Smithsonian wants to restore it.
The giant, aged rocket rests on its side on the grounds of the Marshall Space Flight Center, a neglected and nearly forgotten symbol of a bygone era. Its once-shiny surface is spattered with rust and mold. Birds build nests in its huge engines and weeds peer out from beneath its body.
More below.
The Smithsonian wants to restore it. And so should we. We have never flown further or faster than with the Saturn V.
The Smithsonian Institution (news - web sites), which owns the rockets and lends them to NASA for public display, is attempting to raise $2.5 million to restore the Saturn V at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. It is the only one made up entirely of rocket stages intended for flight. The rocket was to have launched astronauts to the moon on Apollo 18, but that mission and two subsequent ones were canceled.
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The Smithsonian received a $1.25 million matching grant from the National Park Service and the National Trust for Historic Preservation. It has received about $790,000 in donations, but officials must come up with $460,000 more before the grant expires in June.
We used to be the party that challenged the nation to explore higher and further. The Saturn V was NASA's response to Kennedy's dare. Apart from being part of America's glorious past in space, the Saturn V encapsulates a decade when Democrats dared to dream and make the dream real.
Yahoo repost of a Chicago Tribune story by By Dahleen Glanton Tribune national correspondent