SASM 30 Days of Aviation
While serving as Curator of the Stafford Air & Space Museum, our Founder lead a month-long Facebook-based exhibit highlight feature of some of the most dramatic pieces in the Stafford’s collection. Mr. Davis handled photography, research, and copywriting for each piece, bringing some of aviation history’s most important pieces onto the screens and phones of over a hundred thousand viewers throughout the course of the campaign. Enjoy some of the attached posts from the #SASM30DaysOfAviation below. 
Behind this console, the team at Mission Control helped a crippled ship get home in the "most successful failure" in NASA history. Immortalized forever in the Academy Award-winning film "Apollo 13", the team at Mission Control turned what could have been NASA's darkest moment into its finest hour.
View from the cockpit of the Mikoyan Gurevich MiG-21 Fighter. Created by the Soviet Union during the height of the Cold War, the MiG-21 holds the title of the most built jet aircraft in history with over 11,000 constructed and used by over 50 air forces on four continents.
Considered the "Holy Grail" of Aerospace Artifacts, these cherished pieces of the wing and propeller of the Wright Flyer, the first heavier-than-air powered aircraft on December 17th, 1903 was sixty-five and half years later, carried by Apollo 11 Commander Neil Armstrong aboard the Lunar Module "Eagle" to the Sea of Tranquility on July 20th, 1969.
This is a 17-inch machete and sheath from an Apollo Era survival pack rucksack. Each mission launched with two survival packs containing a variety of tools for the crew to survive up to 48 hours after landing while awaiting rescue. This particular tool is an all-metal knife with an aluminum handle and high-quality stainless steel blade featuring a cutting edge on one side and a sawing edge on the other.
The Mark 6 Re-Entry Vehicle is huge... at 14 feet tall over 8 feet across... it was designed to carry the W-53 warhead atop the Titan II Intercontinental Ballistic Missile in early days as a weapon of war before becoming the launch platform of Project Gemini. The W-53 remains to this day one of the largest thermonuclear warheads ever built by the United States, with a yield more than 600 times that of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan.
Designed in the hopes of powering the Soviets to the Moon, the NK-33 was intended to work together with 29 additional NK-33's to lift the enormous 344-foot N1 Rocket's first stage. This engine came from one of the three N1's never launched (N1 L8,9, or 10) and its display next to the NASA F-1 in the Space Race gallery is the only place in the world to see the Soviet & American Moon rocket engines side by side.
This autographed Flight Plan of Apollo 12 (November 14th to 24th, 1969), signed by the fourth man to walk on the Moon... Alan Bean... and CSM Pilot Richard Gordon. As the Apollo Capsule splashed into the Pacific, the 16 mm film camera used on the mission became dislodged and struck Bean in the forehead, knocking the LM Pilot briefly unconscious. Though OK, Bean suffered a mild concussion and would end up needing six stitches.
This simple wooden rocking chair belonged to none other than Dr. Robert Goddard, the "Father of Modern Rocketry". As a Professor at Clark University, Goddard taught Edwin Aldrin, Sr.... father of Buzz Aldrin, the second man to set foot on the Moon. From the chair of the man that invented the first liquid-fueled rocket to the most powerful one ever built, this image covers the gambit of American rocketry.
Each of the four exterior engines were attached to the Saturn V with gimbals like the one on our F-1 seen here. While the center engine was a fixed mount, the four outer engines moved in order to steer the Saturn V's climbs into history. Even more remarkable, each of these engines used 42,500 gallons per minute of kerosene (RP-1) and liquid oxygen. All through that single hole in the gimbal's center.
Presented to General Stafford in January 1993 as one of President George H. W. Bush's final acts before leaving office, the Congressional Space Medal of Honor is the nation's highest award for space service. Its presentation to Stafford was the 8th in the award's history. Unlike its military counterpart, the Medal of Honor, the Space Medal of Honor has only been awarded to eleven living recipients and twenty-eight overall.
The glove Astronaut Charles "Pete" Conrad, Jr. wore during the second mission to the Moon, Apollo 12, in November of 1969. As Commander, Conrad became the third man to set foot on the Moon. The two-time Project Gemini Astronaut landed on the Moon on November 19th, 1969 in the Lunar Module "Intrepid" with LM Pilot Alan Bean. Conrad & Bean spent nearly eight hours exploring the surface of the Moon over the course of two EVAs.
Just a simple mechanical pencil... right? This piece proves that even the smallest of artifacts can be of historical significance. This Garland 35-P Mechanical Pencil was flown to Lunar orbit as the primary writing instrument of Mission Commander, Tom Stafford. Standard equipment for the Apollo missions starting with Apollo 9 and is noted as likely the most heavily-used writing instrument on the Apollo missions.