Video & Photos: Space Shuttle Enterprise Opens in NYC

First Look: Space Shuttle Enterprise Exhibit Opening in NYC

by Robert Z. Pearlman, collectSPACE.com Editor

Date: 19 July 2012 Time: 07:12 AM ET

NASA’s space shuttle Enterprise, the space agency’s original prototype for its winged orbiter fleet, opens on display at the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum in New York City on July 19, 2012. Click here for more photos. CREDIT: collectSPACE.com/Ben Cooper View full size image

NEW YORK
The new exhibit for NASA's space shuttle Enterprise — opening in New York City Thursday afternoon (July 19) — starts off a bit like a spacewalk. Visitors to the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum don't need to don spacesuits, but they do pass through an airlock into a darkened atmosphere — designed to keep the pressurized display pavilion inflated and to evoke the feeling of being in space.
Rising 60 feet (18 meters) above the Intrepid's flight deck — the Intrepid museum is built into the retired U.S.S. Intrepid World War II aircraft carrier — the climate controlled "Space Shuttle Pavilion" displays Enterprise 10 feet (3 meters) off the ground. Its nose propped up such that it is level with the deck, visitors can get an up-close view under and around the original NASA prototype shuttle, similar to how it looked coming in for a touchdown after one of its approach and landing test flights in the late 1970s.
"The Intrepid is the only place in the entire world where somebody can come and explore an aircraft carrier, explore a submarine, explore the fastest planes known to mankind — both military and commercial, and now you can explore the first space shuttle. That's a pretty great statement to be able to say," Susan Marenoff-Zausner, president of the Intrepid, told reporters on Wednesday (July 18).

MORE: http://www.space.com/16652-space-shuttle-enterprise-nyc-museum-opening.html

VIDEO: http://www.nypost.com/video?vcid=23748706&freewheel=90861&sitesection=dash

PHOTO GALLERY: http://collectspace.com/news/news-071812a.html

INTREPID MUSEUM WEB SITE: http://www.intrepidmuseum.org/

Sources: Space.com, WPIX-TV 11, New York Post, CollectSpace.com, Intrepid Museum

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