THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, June 25, 1995 TAG: 9506250162
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JAMES SCHULTZ, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: WALLOPS ISLAND LENGTH: Medium: 99 lines
Ten-year-old John Wilson could hardly keep still when he saw the airplanes on the tarmac. Trailing mom Janet in his enthusiastic wake, John made the rounds of aircraft on display, from a huge C-5 cargo plane that could gobble up a fleet of buses, to a pint-size T-37 trainer jet that seemed barely big enough for a single pilot.
``I think it's cool,'' he said. A little later, John sprinted off to watch model rockets being prepped for launch and a brief overhead flight.
Said Janet Wilson with an affectionate smile: ``We may be here for a while.''
The Wilsons, who drove down from Quantico, Md., and an estimated 6,000 others braved blood-hungry mosquitos and uncertain weather Saturday to help NASA Wallops Flight Facility celebrate its 50th anniversary. Vistors browsed a variety of exhibits large and small, most centered in a several-acre area bounded by the Wallops hangar and a futuristic mission control center.
The only hitch in the proceedings came courtesy of a stationary front that brought early morning fog, high humidity, and the afternoon promise of thunderstorms. The grey-white clouds that boiled low on the morning horizon extended far enough south to keep scheduled keynote speaker Rep. Herbert Bateman (R-Va.) grounded in Newport News.
Speaking in his place was Robert Bloxom, the Eastern Shore representative to the Virginia General Assembly, who read a congratulatory resolution approved by both Assembly houses. As if to underscore Bloxom's remarks, by noon the weather cleared enough for sun and blue sky to appear.
The Wallops anniversary comes at a time of the greatest upheaval in America's space program since the early 1960s. Then, the country was called upon to put men on the moon and return them safely to earth. Today, talk of dreams has been replaced by calls to drastically reduce the scale and reach of government - specifically, to remove billions from NASA's budget.
``If you really wanted to say what the fun times here were, they were in the 1960s,'' said Bobby Flowers, head of Wallop's electromechanical systems branch. Flowers, 58, came to work at Wallops in November 1960.
``People were trying things. The emphasis was on accomplishing missions rather than on bureaucracy. Back then, you could afford to have a failure.''
Beginning in the mid-1940s with model rocket launches, engineers from NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton developed several kinds and generations of rockets at Wallops. What was a lonely Atlantic Ocean outpost became the cradle of the United States space program; eventually, prototypes of the Mecury spacecraft were flight-tested on the Eastern Shore.
Today, Wallops is under the administration of Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. The facility is one of just three rocket-launch bases in the continental United States. Kennedy Space Center in Florida and Vandenberg Air Force Base in California are the other two.
Wallops continues to manage NASA's so-called sounding rocket program. University scientists and their students from across the country design small rocket payloads that take measurements in the upper reaches of Earth's atmosphere.
The payloads are flown on small, refurbished rockets that travel through the upper reaches of the Earth's atmosphere and then parachute to land, or into the ocean.
To date, according to figures compiled by Wallops, the facility has overseen the flight of more than 15,000 sounding rockets.
Wallops is preparing for its first large-scale commercial rocket launch in late July or early August. The Conestoga rocket, designed and built by EER Systems, Inc. of Northern Virginia, is scheduled to carry 11 scientific instruments into orbit inside a two-part satellite nestled in the rocket's nosecone.
Despite their past and future accomplishments, however, the Wallops researchers appear just as apprehensive as their other NASA colleagues about the future of the space agency.
``These days we spend a whole lot of time worrying about our budget and staff levels and much less on technical problems,'' said Arnold Torres, Wallops' director of suborbital projects and operations. ``There's certainly a ripple effect on morale. In this age of constant downsizing, and because things are in such a state of flux, people are always wondering what's going to happen to them.''
On Saturday, however, budget woes were far from the mind of Dominic Ward, 17, an up-and-coming high school senior and member of the Civil Air Patrol's Wicomico Composite Squadron. As part of a mission control demonstration, Ward and 13 of his fellow CAP cadets sat in Wallops' $1 million, state-of-the-art control center and tracked the launch of model rockets on a bank of large computerized video screens.
Ward, who sat as an adult controller might, in front of a complex computer array, could hardly keep from smiling.
``This day has been excellent,'' he said. ``We get to play with real equipment. I'm going to be glued to this seat for the rest of the day.'' ILLUSTRATION: TAMARA VONINSKI/Staff color photos
Paul and Diane Chance from Delaware watch the arrival of an F-16 at
NASA Wallops Island Flight Facility's 50th anniversary celebration
Saturday morning.
An estimated 6,000 people braved humidity and mosquitoes to browse
exhibits large and small, including the Wallops hangar and a
futuristic mission control center. Above, several people explore a
C-5 cargo plane.
by CNB