Today’s column from The Daily Journal (Kankakee, Ill.) and The Times (Ottawa, Ill.) …
Will space history shuttle into Chicago?
The WISCH LIST
April 9, 2011
The Bulls are fighting for a top berth, the Blackhawks are fighting for any berth and the White Sox and Cubs have only just begun their 2011 seasons.
Along with perhaps a rash of 2,011 injuries.
But, even if you didn’t realize it, Chicago is already in the playoffs this month. And the championship series is about to blast off.
On Tuesday – the 30th anniversary of first space shuttle flight – NASA will reveal whether Chicago’s Adler Planetarium has been selected as one of the two museums out of 20 competitors to be awarded either Endeavour or Atlantis, the pair of retiring orbiters currently up for grabs.
In 2010, NASA announced that it was sifting through proposals from 21 institutions around the country that had expressed the willingness to raise the nearly $30 million needed to pay for shipping and assembly of one of the shuttles and additional money to construct a suitable exhibit area. NASA already has promised the oldest shuttle, Discovery, to the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.
Last month, Adler unveiled an elaborate concept drawing of the kind of structure that it would build on a parking lot west of the planetarium to house a space shuttle and any exhibits related to it. Following the presentation, Adler president Paul Knappenberger made his final pitch for the Windy City saying, “Chicago is the best place in the Middle West for a shuttle.”
And while I might not agree with Knappenberger on the need to call our region the “Middle West” (seems to me Midwest works just fine), I do agree with him that Chicago – the biggest city between the Eastern and Western, err … East and West coasts – is an ideal spot to display such an important piece of space exploration history.
Chicago has the people. Chicago has the tourists. And, if last weekend was any indication, Chicago also has the interest to make it a success.
This past Sunday afternoon, I took a trip down to Alder – my first in many, many years – to check out the planetarium and see just how many people were still had an appetite for learning about space travel.
Back when I was growing up during the 1980s, that appetite for space exploration – along with moon boots, Tang and astronaut ice cream – was ravenous. Shuttle launches were televised, the Challenger explosion was an enormous national tragedy, and just about every kid I knew entertained dreams of one day taking a trip into space.
Or, they at least, liked to play with Space Legos.
Here in the 21st century, though, NASA doesn’t get the media coverage that it used to, and I just don’t hear much chatter about space. As a result, I questioned how much people still cared about astronauts and the like. But, last Sunday, I was pleasantly surprised to find Adler absolutely packed and overflowing with kids and parents.
The planetarium’s proposal to win an orbiter has been aided by a space shuttle advisory committee headed up by Chicago-area resident and Apollo 13 astronaut James Lovell. And part of Adler’s plan, according to Knappenberger, would be to build a glass-walled shuttle pavilion atop an underground parking garage that would replace the museum’s current surface lot.
“In one direction, the shuttle would be framed looking out over Lake Michigan,” Knappenberger said. “And in the other direction, it would face Chicago’s beautiful skyline.”
Earlier this year, Discovery took its last space flight, and come this summer, Atlantis is supposed to close out the shuttle program.
If space was the Final Frontier for those shuttles, then could Chicago be one’s Final Destination?
We’ll find out soon enough.