“One Giant Leap: Saving the Saturn V Rocket, Johnson Space Center”

Washington Conservation Guild Meeting, Washington, DC, January 2005.

Speaker: Patty Miller

ABSTRACT

The National Air and Space Museum’s Saturn V Rocket is an icon of the space age, immortalizing the birth of America’s manned space program and our historic race to the moon. Of the three examples that have remained to this day, the Saturn V Rocket located at Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas is the only one composed of flight-ready equipment. The Saturn V rocket arrived at JSC Rocket Park for display in 1977. Since being assembled, the rocket has remained outdoors, exposed to the elements, with limited resources to maintain and protect this unique artifact of the twentieth century.

Time has not been kind to this colossal assemblage of “space-age” materials. Plastic, rubber, Mylar, polyurethane foam, aluminum, titanium and stainless steel are just some of the materials that have suffered from long-term exposure to Houston climate conditions.  For almost 30 years, high humidity, high temperatures, high ozone concentrations, salt air, acid rain, and chemical pollution have been attacking stages of the rocket solely designed for a 2 1/2 minute flight.

The work currently underway at JSC includes the completion of a temporary climate-controlled building to house the rocket until a permanent facility can be built and the first phase of conservation treatment to arrest decay and once again make the rocket suitable for exhibit. This presentation will briefly discuss the work carried out by the conservation team in the spring and summer of 2004; the findings of the hands-on condition assessment, as well as materials research/testing and analysis, which contributed to finding the least aggressive and most effective methods to stabilize the rocket.