Texas Air & Space Museum

Texas

One plane in this museum was flown forty-nine times by the man the airport is named after, who died aboard Columbia.

The museum keeps a NASA Gulfstream II that trained astronauts to land the Space Shuttle. NASA called it 946. Rick Husband flew it forty-nine times. He commanded STS-107, the Columbia mission that broke apart on re-entry on February first, 2003, killing everyone aboard. The airport next door carries his name. Getting here took the museum three decades and one collapse. Aviation enthusiasts started it in 1989 at a small private field. In 1997 it moved into the old Amarillo air terminal buildings, which handled the city's commercial flights for most of the years between 1929 and 1972. Then the upkeep on those aging hangars outran what the museum and the city could pay. It gave away thirteen of its fourteen aircraft to other museums, boxed up the artifacts, and closed in 2007. It reopened under a new name in 2011. Among the planes it has since gathered is a locally built Reno air racer called the Beercat.

Wayside reads this to you as you drive past, timed to arrive before the place does. Plan a route through here.

What this was written from
was flown 49 times by the airport's namesake—Rick Husband, commander of STS-107 Space Shuttle Columbia that on February 1, 2003, disintegrated upon re-entry, killing all crew members

Written from Wikipedia, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Nearby, on the same roads

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  • Diocese of Amarillo 7.5 mi In 1981 the bishop of Amarillo told workers assembling the neutron bomb to quit their jobs.
  • Cadillac Ranch 15.5 mi In 1974 a man calling himself Leo Wyoming ran newspaper ads in Amarillo seeking used Cadillacs that need not run.
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