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A rocket garden is a display of missiles, sounding rockets, or space launch vehicles usually in an outdoor setting. The proper form of the term usually refers to the Rocket Garden at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex.[1]
With rare exceptions, rockets are expendable, so rockets in displays have not been flown. As in the case of the Saturn V,[2] later planned missions were cancelled, leaving unneeded rockets for the museums. For displays of early American space hardware, such as Project Mercury and Project Gemini, surplus missiles have been painted to look like manned space launch vehicles. Engineering test articles (such as the Pathfinder Space Shuttle stack in Huntsville) or purpose-built full-scale replicas are also displayed in rocket gardens.
Examples of rocket gardens
- Space Center Houston
- Kennedy Space Center, Merritt Island, Florida
- Air Force Space and Missile Museum, Cape Canaveral, Florida
- U.S. Space & Rocket Center, Huntsville, Alabama
- National Air and Space Museum, Washington, DC (indoors)
- Johnson Space Center, Houston, Texas
- Thiokol, near Promontory, Utah
- Wallops Flight Facility Visitor Center, Virginia
- NASA Goddard Rocket Garden, Maryland
- 1964 New York World's Fairgrounds, Flushing Meadows Park, New York. Now the New York Hall of Science
- White Sands Missile Range, near Las Cruces, New Mexico
- New Mexico Museum of Space History, Alamogordo, New Mexico
- National Atomic Museum, Albuquerque, New Mexico
- National Museum of the United States Air Force, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Dayton, Ohio
- Fort Sill, Lawton, Oklahoma
- Musée de l'Air et de l'Espace, Le Bourget, France
- Air Power Park, Hampton, Virginia
- F.E. Warren Air Force Base, Cheyenne, Wyoming
- Woomera, South Australia
- Historisch-technisches Informationszentrum, Peenemünde, Germany
Photos
U.S rockets at the Space & Rocket Center. Huntsville, Alabama.
Authentic Saturn 1 (left) and replica Saturn V (right) at Huntsville, Alabama.
Indoor rocket garden, National Air and Space Museum.
Thiokol rocket garden, Utah.
Air Force Space and Missile Museum, Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida.
Woomera Missile Park, Woomera, South Australia
KSCenter Visitors Center rocket garden
KSC Saturn IB & F1 engine
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See also
- Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex#Rocket garden
- Rock garden, likely the inspiration of the term "rocket garden"
- Sculpture garden, another example of a "garden" displaying nonliving, manmade objects
References
- ^ "Kennedy Space Center Rocket Garden Archived 2010-06-28 at the Wayback Machine." Kennedy Space Center. Retrieved on 9 January 2012.
- ^ "Kennedy Space Center Rocket Garden." Kennedy Space Center. Retrieved on 9 January 2012.