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Alliance Trucking Inc., Proudly and Safely Hauls the Historic Apollo 9 Command Module "Gumdrop" to it's new home at the San Diego Space Museum

Apollo 9 to go on Exhibit at the San Diego Aerospace Museum

(June 1, 2004) ­ The San Diego Aerospace Museum has announced the arrival of the Command Module from the Apollo 9 space flight mission on loan from the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. The Command Module is expected to remain on display at the Museum until March 2007 after which the loan may be extended.

The National Air and Space Museum (NASM) has in its collection all spacecraft flown in America's space program. "This is the culmination of a four year effort," said Aerospace Museum Executive Vice President Bruce Bleakley, "and now the work really starts-fabricating the rest of the exhibit, developing the associated educational programs and promoting public awareness of this national treasure."

Apollo 9 will be the only Apollo Command Module flown in space that will be on display west of the Rocky Mountains beginning June 21st ­ the day after the 35th anniversary of the first manned lunar landing. Built by the North American Rockwell Space Division plant in Downey, CA, the spacecraft, named "Gumdrop" by its crew, will initially take up residence in the free venue of the Museum's Rotunda, enabling visitors a close look at what Bleakley describes as "a vital piece of American space flight history."

The Apollo 9 crew consisted of Gemini program veterans James McDivitt as Mission Commander, Dave Scott as Command Module Pilot, and rookie Russell L. Schweickart as the Lunar Module Pilot. During a 10-day mission launched March 3, 1969, the crew accomplished the first tests of the Lunar Module, or LM, that would take a crew to the surface of the Moon.

For the first time in space flight history, crewmembers flew in a spacecraft-the LM-designed to operate only in the vacuum of space. McDivitt and Schweickart separated the LM from the Command Module and maneuvered as far as 113 miles away before a successful rendezvous and docking. In addition to putting the LM through its paces, LM Pilot "Rusty" Schweickart successfully tested the Portable Life Support System that astronauts would wear on the Moon's surface.

The success of Apollo 9 paved the way for the Apollo 10 crew to take their Lunar Module within nine miles of the Moon's surface as a "dress rehearsal" for the subsequent landing of Apollo 11 on July 20, 1969.

Press release information and photographs courtesy of:

John Bolthouse
Vice President of Operations
San Diego Aerospace Museum
Web Site: http://www.aerospacemuseum.org
2001 Pan American Plaza
Balboa Park, San Diego, CA 92101
(619) 234-8291