Anniversary of Humans in Space
(March 15 - June 30, 2011)

Where were you on April 12, 1961? What were you doing that day? That was the date that the very first human traveled into outer space. His name was Yuri Gagarin, a young Soviet, who rode into space on the Vostok I and captured the imagination of the world.

Just three weeks later, Alan Shepard piloted the Freedom 7 as the first American to achieve space travel on May 5, 1961. And less than one year later, John Glenn was orbiting the Earth for the first time ever aboard the Friendship 7 on February 20, 1962.

These are memories for some people and history for others, and they came alive at the Museum to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of Human Space Travel. The exhibit contained miniature paper sculptures that were constructed by John Sullivan of Aberdeen and they are exact replicas of the rockets or space shuttles and capsules of space programs world-wide. The detailing of the models is perfect in its representation of the spacecraft down to the tiniest particulars.

Included in the exhibit were models exactly 1/144 or 1/48 the size of the real spacecraft. They included: the first human space ship, the Vostok from the Soviet Union; the Redstone Rocket which launched the Freedom 7 with Alan Shepard aboard for the United States; and the Mercury Spacecraft which took a single crewman 4 orbital flights between 1962-63.

The Gemini-Titan Rocket was featured which lifted off the Gemini Spacecraft that completed 10 flights between 1965-66. The model of the Soyuz Spacecraft represented the longest period of continuous human presence in space that lasted just eight days short of 10 years from September 5, 1989 to August 28, 1999.

And, of course, who will ever forget the Apollo-Saturn Rocket and the Apollo Command Module and the space program that flew to the Moon!
This group of models was on loan courtesy of John Sullivan. They were all downloaded from the Internet sites and printed on cardstock with an inkjet printer, and then sculpted into 3-dinemsional forms. To see more of John’s work, visit his blog at: http://johnspapermodelsetc.blogspot.com/

To view other past exhibits, click here.