Life-Size Gemini, Mercury Capsules, Activities Abound for Spacebound Youth

The EAA’s annual Space Day returns to Oshkosh, coming back to the field on October 8th. Space Day marks the EAA’s participation in World Space Week, with activities and exhibits showing off some of the highlights of the space industry’s past while helping kids build interest in its future. 

This year, the Museum will have a distinguished guest to put a capstone on the festivities. Eileen Collins, the first female shuttle pilot and commander, will be speaking to the gathered youth to help them on their way to follow her footsteps. Collins got her spacefaring start as an astronaut in 1990, going on to become a pilot aboard the space shuttle Discovery in 1995. Later on in 1999 for her second stint aboard the aircraft, Collins took the shuttle Columbia into orbit as the first woman to ever command a shuttle mission. Before becoming an astronaut, broke ground in the Air Force where she was the first female T-38 flight instructor.

For Space Day, the museum will have life size Mercury and Gemini capsules open to the public, allowing visitors to climb inside and see what it was like to pilot the first American spacecraft. (Replicas, of course. No original, irreplaceable history is damaged at the children’s exhibit) The Apollo program precursors are important preludes to NASA’s greatest space achievements, which segues neatly into an activity where attendees design their own re-entry capsules. While at the museum, they can also work to solve a series of moon-based habitat issues, developing methods to survive on the moon, or build their own air-compressed rocket from basic materials. 

Youths 18 and under may submit entries for the Space Day Habitat Creation contest, choosing from 2 types of habitats to build at home. Interested kids must construct their own land or orbital habitat solely from at-home, recyclable materials. Entries are accepted on the EAA Aviation Museum site. The Space Day festivities will run from 10:00 to 16:00 on October 8th. 

FMI: www.eaa.org/eaa-museum, www.worldspaceweek.org