The Space Center Twenty One Years Ago.

Hello Troops,
Last week marked the 21st birthday of our Space Education Center. To commemorate the event I'm posting pictures taken a week before the Space Center opened on November 8, 1990.

We start with the Space Center's Office, also known to us old timers as its original name "The Briefing Room".


This is looking toward the front of the room. Principal Stan Harward is standing in the room's doorway. On the right are the original classroom coat hangers and cubbies for student's belongings (the Phoenix sits there today). The cubbies were removed a few years later and staff bunks were built in their place. The big screen TV is roughly where the Phoenix's main viewer sits today. You can see the white board, still on the wall in its exact same place after 21 years. The tables and chairs are used today in Discovery. The Briefing Room was first used for the classroom session of the field trip.


The Staff Board was at the front of the Briefing Room. We had nine volunteers when the Center opened in 1990. I was the only person on the payroll. The first picture is of Jeff Schoonover. Today Jeff is the principal of Provo High School. His children attend Central School. Kyle Sanderson's pictures comes next. He is a math teacher and Asst. Football Coach at Pleasant Grove High. Jake Mattson is next. He lives in Las Vegas with his wife and four children. Burke Craghead is next followed by Tony Grover. Tony is a lawyer in Salt Lake City with two children. I can't make out or remember who the person is at the end.



Recognize the sink? Its not there anymore. How about the drawers? Yep, this is the where the Odyssey's Control Room sits today. The Gift Shop used to sit right here.

The Briefing Room looking toward the Voyager's entrance.


The back of the Briefing Room before the Odyssey. My desk is next to the filing cabinets. The mural was done on butcher paper by our Young Astronaut Club. To the far left you'll see the doorway to the library, today's home of you know who! Notice my less than comfy desk chair.



This was the bulletin board behind my desk at the back of the room. That bulletin board covered the hole in the wall that today leads to the Odyssey's Engineering Section.

And now, we move on into the Voyager Mission Simulator (as it was called then).


The short doorway was still a hazard as it is today. Notice there is no Captain's Loft. That was added a few years later.


Now a turn into the unfinished Voyager Control Room.


Then down to the Crew Quarters. Same red counter top


And up the spiral staircase to the Voyager's Bridge. This is the original furniture. We opened without raised platforms for the Captain's, Security and Record's stations. They were added only after I discovered the students sitting at those positions couldn't see the Tactical Screen. The box in the picture sits where today's Engineering Station is located. The box was the home of the original Robotic Arm (an idea I tried to import from the Challenger Centers).

In this photograph you see the Captain's desk in the distance. In the foreground right is Security. Foreground left is Records. You'll also easily find the left and right wings.

This is the front of the Bridge before the main viewer and TV were installed. The original two emblems of the Space Center are still there today, hidden by the two large black and gold Federation Emblems.


We descend down from the Bridge looking back at the Security Station.


And finally a right turn will take us back to the Briefing Room.