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Originally Posted by Initiator001
When Lee Piester gave his talk at NARAM-48 last year, he mentioned visiting the Smithsonian and examining examples of Centuri products the museum had collected and stored. I think he even had a picture of him posing with a drawer which was open to show the kit packages.
I was in Washington, D.C., four months ago. The Museum on the Mall had NO model rocketry items on display (They did have Quest rockets in the Gift Shop).
The Dulles Annex Museum had a display of space memoralbilia off to the side towards the back and against the wall in the Space Hanger. The two model rocketry items were from over thirty years ago and donated by G. Harry Stine.
One was a COX Nike Zeus rocket still in the packaging but the shrink-wrap was missing. The second item was a MPC Starter Set and it was still in shrink-wrap.
The local NAR Section should see if they can establish contact with someone at the Smithsonian and bring the display up to date.
Bob
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Bob,
Lee Piester's talk is the kind of thing I'm curious about. A number of people have suggested the Smithsonian has a collection, and I think most rocketeers would be happy to donate, but there's just no hard evidence such a collection really exists.
Bill's mentioning being given something by "a gent at the Smithsonian" made me wonder again if there really is a holy grail of rocketry collections laying hidden in some basement in Washington. Is there really an El Dorado of model rocketry?
The two items you saw were what I was referencing at the Udvar-Hazy. Each of them is included in the
Smithsonian Collections Database which can be searched by the public.
Searching on "Stine" brings up the items on display, but "NAR, Carlisle, Estes, Centuri, Semroc" all yield nothing, which strongly suggests the Smithsonian has almost no real collection.
Interestingly, searching on "VFR" does bring up a nozzle from a one stick repulsor in the collection. So there does appear to be at least an inkling of an understanding of the role played by model rocketeers and rocketry societies in the history of space exploration.
But as of now, I've yet to see evidence the Smithsonian has any significant model rocketry artifact collection, or any interest in collecting any. I have to admit, I think that's really odd.