Posted on 07/09/2011 9:06:13 PM PDT by Excuse_My_Bellicosity
ROUGEMONT, N.C. --
I have to admit -- I am a space nerd.
I've watched "Apollo 13" about 60 times, and "From the Earth to the Moon" about six times.
When I worked the AM shift at NBC-17 and I needed a book to put me to sleep at 7 p.m., I found an old textbook at a used bookstore near N.C. State called "The Science of Spaceflight." Boring as heck, but now I know what a Hohmann transfer is, and I can tell you how they mix propulsion elements to send rockets a million miles.
Like everyone else, it started somewhere.
For me it was going to the Museum of Life and Science almost every day as a kid -- my mom was a volunteer there so I got free roam of their space exhibit -- it had a great mockup of a moon landing and a Lunar Module, and also a real test command module.
That's where it started for me.
For Shannon Schanze, it started when she was a kid, watching the space race and the Apollo missions in the '60s. For millions of Americans, that's how it started.
Then there's Shannon's 16-year-old son, Kevin. His love affair of space exploration started when it washed up down the street from his beach house.
It was a one-in-a-million discovery. When he was 11, Kevin was riding on a golf cart around his family's beach home neighborhood in Bath, N.C. It was 2006 and Hurricane Ernesto had flooded parts of the Pamlico sound, so there was debris all over the place.
"My buddy and I saw this metal sheet on the ground, and we thought it was a stop sign or something," Kevin recalls. "I turned it over and it was a really old piece of metal, and there was a little stamp on it. I looked closer and saw that it said "Apollo 16.'"
Whoa.
"I heard everyone screaming come outside," Shannon recalled. "We were just stunned. It was the coolest thing that could ever happen to an 11-year-old."
After a few painstaking years trying to confirm the authenticity of their find, the Schanzes received a letter from NASA telling them the good news: Kevin had indeed found a piece of Apollo 16.
NASA confirmed that it was from the first stage of the rocket; the part that never made it into space, but splashed down in the Atlantic a few minutes after takeoff.
Kevin had some time to figure out the unlikelihood of that piece of metal's journey.
"We think it came down right off the coast of Florida. Then over the course of about 30 years, it worked its way up the coast, probably got into the Gulfstream. It must've snuck into one of the Inlets in the Outer Banks and floated through into the Pamlico Sound," Kevin said.
"After the hurricane [Ernesto], there's a peninsula in our neighborhood that always goes underwater. That's where the sheet turned up.
"The NASA director told me it was a one in a million chance that I'd find it, and another one in a million chance that it had the Mission Stamp on it, because there aren't too many of those."
Kevin continued, "I kinda knew it was important but didn't know it was that important."
No kidding. As soon as NASA confirmed its authenticity, they wanted it back.
"They sent us a nice, but rather urgent email asking us if we'd sent it to them or if they should just come and get it," Shannon said. "It sounded like it would be a bunch of guys in black suits and sunglasses on my porch, so I said, 'Let's just send it back.'"
Kevin was sad to see it leave, but the gesture has paid off exponentially.
Last weekend NASA took the family on an all-access tour through the Kennedy Space Center as a thank-you.
They let Kevin go the top of the Atlantis launch pad, go into the Atlantis cockpit, and they showered him with books, mission patches and pins.
And NASA invited him back this weekend, the family had a seat in the VIP viewing deck for the final launch of a Space Shuttle.
"He is getting to experience something only a handful of people can experience," Shannon explained.
One other thing both Schanzes told me: they also experienced a palpable melancholy mood around Kennedy.
"They all just seem so… sad right now. It's like they know that this is coming to an end. They've spent their whole life, all these long hours, surrounded by all of these amazing things that they shared with us.
"And now they have no idea what they are going to do next."
Where did you get the idea that the author confused the Shuttle with Apollo 16? I don’t see any hint of that.
Or are you saying they should have treated him to an Apollo launch rather than a Shuttle launch? That may be been a tad difficult.
Oh, in the article headline. Yes, whoever wrote the headline is either a moron or didn’t read the actual article. I suspect the latter — just threw the headline on there after a very fast scan of the article. Headline / Title writers are usually not the authors.
I vote to send Sheila Jackson-Lee.
I’d delete my post if I could! Unfortunately, once posted to FR, all messages belong to posterity...
"Durham teen discovers piece of shuttle history."
Then the story tells of how he discovered a fragment from Apollo 16, not from any space shuttle.
Seems fairly obvious to me. The reporter is a moron.
But talk about sparkly vampires, caring werewolves, and Harry Potter...whoo boy! They’ll yak your ear off for an hour!
Agreed. It was from a part of the rocket that was expected to fall into the ocean and be non-recoverable. If they want it back so bad, I’d say, “Great, let’s start the bidding!”
Very cool and not cool that NASA has been outsourced by Obama. About 10,000 jobs in Florida gone. It was sad to see the last Shuttle launch the other day.
Or "celebrities." They can quote from every "reality" show on TV and tell you what Lady Gaga thinks of George Bush.
IMHO, one of the great leaps downward in American culture and public intelligence began on September 14, 1981. That was the day "Entertainment Tonight" premiered. Look at all the TV tabloid garbage that followed.
I have to disagree, tanks and aircraft are expected to land, drive back into base, etc. This part was expected to drop into the ocean and be non-recoverable. When I was in the US Navy, it was common to throw aluminum and steel parts that were no longer serviceable or repairable over the side of the ship (such as bolts that had stripped threads, or a pump shaft that was sheared in half). If a Navy sailor threw something like that over the side and somebody found it later, it wouldn’t be reasonable for the Navy go tell them, “Hey, that’s US Government property and we gotta have that back!” This Apollo 16 part has the same status as a spent shell casing. NASA disposed of it in the sea, nobody ever had a reasonable expectation to see it ever again, and they lost rights to it as soon as it hit the water.
The part from Apollo 16 also wouldn’t be used in any kind of crash/mishap investigation, to NASA couldn’t take that tack, either.
The title says “Durham teen discovers piece of shuttle history”. No, the teen discovered a piece of Apollo rocket history, not space shuttle history.
BTW, remember when they did find a chunk of the Challenger that washed up on the beach several years later?
I remember that. They were pieces the size of car doors.
Oops, I see that this already got discussed and cleared up.
“I vote to send Sheila Jackson-Lee”
So, we’ll send the cat later then?
The first 6 paragraphs are about the article writer. He uses “I” 8 times in the first 4 sentences.
This could be the brain behind the TOTUS!
Is it just me or does it sound odd that these “pieces of METAL” just sort of float around the ocean until they beach themselves?
Any beachcombers out there? Do you often find large chunks of METAL?
In November of 1986, I found this very thin piece of metal (three, four millimeters, maybe) about the size of a piece of notebook paper sticking up out of the sand while at the beach in Cocoa Beach, FL.
The metal had several burn holes in it about the size of a lit cigarette end and had several “tears” in the metal, giving it this twisted look.
The most surprising thing about it given it’s size and thickness? Can’t be bent. Looks like it could be easily twisted in one’s hands but, nope, won’t give an inch.
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