(KNSI) – The Space Shuttle Inspiration will be St. Cloud-bound soon.
It is being dismantled and prepared for transportation at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Its final destination is central Minnesota, thanks to the company LVX Systems, founded by Felicity-John Pederson. He explains to KNSI how he came to own the shuttle.
“We developed some of it [Li-fi light technology] with NASA, and we needed a real-life environment [to test it.] So, they were going to make something, but this space shuttle was sitting there. In time, we started to use this space shuttle. Washington, D.C., gave it to us. I became the owner of it.”
Pederson says the exchange involved no cash.
As SpaceX and NASA’s Artemis programs expand or ramp up, they are looking to add new taxiways to Florida’s Cape Canaveral. Inspiration is standing in the way of that, so it is being disassembled and then moved to central Minnesota.
When everything is said and done, it won’t just be something to look at. Pederson and a local nonprofit founded by Jason Bernick are talking with museum operators and even theme park owners to turn it into an attraction with national reach. Inspiration would be the anchor.
Pederson says, “If you go to NASA’s visitor center, you will go to a spaceport, and there’s a theme ride. It’s like an airport, you go to the gate, and you get into your shuttle. I’d also like to see an interactive element to where you can actually fly a space shuttle.”
Inspiration is one of only two or three mock-ups that exist anywhere in the country.
Bernick added that the audacity of the plan is the reason to try to pull it off. “Last summer, our friend Cassie Miles, who’s really been a big engine behind this, too, you know, she’s the person who’s put together the Children’s Museum. She told me about this, and I thought she was nuts. I said, ‘That’s not real. There’s no way that’s a real thing.’ And that’s the coolest part of this whole thing to me is that it sounds like it’s nuts. And that’s kind of why we should do it. Almost like a literal moonshot.”
Bernick says the organization’s mission statement perfectly sums up what they hope to accomplish. He read it on-air Thursday. “Inspire current and future generations for advancement in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics through experiential learning in the fields of space exploration, discovery, aviation, technical, and mechanical engineering.”
No final location for the new complex has been determined, and the shuttle will be stored, protected from the elements, until it can ignite imagination again one day. It is fitting to have it in a city where one of its high schools is named after the Apollo space program.
Dan Ochsner/KNSI News
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