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From the Moon to “Urban Archaeology”

OASIS Members Help To Build Downey Space Museum

By Steve Bartlett

A group intrepid space volunteers is building the Downey Space Museum at the former Boeing North American facility. Under the leadership of the Aerospace Legacy Foundation, these workers have spent the past several months engaged in “urban archaeology” in the buildings where the Apollo command module and the Space Shuttle were created.

Boeing left the site in 1997, transferring all of their people and most of their equipment and records to locations in Seal Beach and Huntington Beach. Since then, the Downey plant has been largely abandoned, left to feral cats, stray dogs and the ravages of weather. The city of Downey negotiated with Boeing and NASA in the ensuing years to assume ownership of the facility. One provision of the ownership transfer was the creation of a space museum at the site to preserve some of the history created there.

Some of the artifacts collected from the site for the Downey Space Museum. (photo S. Bartlett)

Aerospace Legacy Foundation member Jim Busby has spearheaded the creation of the Downey Space Museum. He has lead volunteers from OASIS, the Orange County Space Society, Boeing and Rockwell retirees, cadets from the Civil Air Patrol, and other local groups as they sifted through the remnants that Boeing left behind, searching for forgotten treasure. Outfitted like spelunkers, the work crews nearly baked in the summer heat. While rooting through the dark, stuffy, humid labyrinth of offices, labs, cubicles, and machine shops where moonships were built a generation ago, they kept a sharp eye out for anything worth preserving in the museum.

These explorers have found parts of Space Shuttles and Apollo capsules, hardware dating back to the 1930’s, filing cabinets full of documents on the design and construction of various space equipment, promotional and commemorative paintings, posters, press packages, and thousands of photographs documenting the history of the site.

The Space Museum will be built around the one hundred foot-plus mockup of the Space Shuttle, donated by Boeing. Longtime OASIS members may remember this mockup from the Rockwell DEI Room, site of several space lectures. The museum will feature space hardware and models, interactive displays, and facilities for presentations and teacher training. One important element of the displays will the Astronaut Walk of Fame, where numerous Apollo, Skylab, and Shuttle crews left signatures in cement to honor the workers who built their spacecraft.

Other parts of facility will be turned into a hospital, a shopping center, and a movie studio. Fittingly, this site is also where some of the film Space Cowboys was shot.