The space shuttle landed at the Naval Air Station Wildwood Museum (NASW) June 27 at 11 a.m.
It didn’t fly in. The shuttle arrived in the back of a flatbed truck. Astronauts must be shorter than expected because this shuttle was less than 4 feet high.
What arrived was actually a space shuttle mock up from the William J. Hughes Technical Center in Pomona, built in their carpentry shop.
Wilson Felder, director of the technical center, said the “not-to-scale” model was made at the center for a fund raising event about 10 years ago.
“When I took over as director, I saw that this shuttle was sitting in my lobby and said ‘wait a minute, this is the Federal Aviation Administration not NASA but we have a shuttle in our lobby,” he said.
Felder offered it to the museum after seeing space suits and a shuttle heat tile demonstrator already on display here. He said a former deputy director of the technical center liked to dress up in a spacesuit and emerge from the shuttle orbiter’s bay.
NASW Director Dr. Joseph Salvatore told the Herald the museum is applying for a grant to create an exhibit celebrating astronauts who were from New Jersey.
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