In The Rockets’ Glare

By RICHARD FASANELLA

Deep in the heart of Flushing Meadows-Corona Park there stands a testament to American ingenuity and the power of the mind to daydream.

Situated next to the New York Hall of Science, the park’s collection of rockets is one of the few attractions remaining from the 1964-65 World’s Fair. The two main attractions are a Titan II-Gemini Rocket and an Atlas-Mercury Rocket.

At a towering 110 feet, the Titan was actually used to launch American spacecraft in the early 1960s. The Gemini orbiting capsule on top, however, is a fiberglass replica of the original space module.

A bit smaller than the Titan, the Atlas rocket dates back to the very origins of the U.S. Space Program. It is a completely original craft used to launch the early one-man Mercury capsules.

These monuments to the age of space travel were part of a much larger display that included a series of 22 rockets donated by the National Aeronautics Space Administration (NASA). The array was part of the U.S. Space Park, a pavilion designed and created by NASA especially for the fair.

And the fair attracted more than 27 million visitors in 1964 and another 24 million in 1965. After the fair closed, the City rededicated Flushing Meadows-Corona Park on June 3, 1967.

Over 30 years of decay later, the Space Park — including the rockets — was finally earmarked for a one million dollar renovation project in 1997.

Queens Borough President Claire Shulman and Mayor Rudy Giuliani each allocated $500,000 in the capital budget to pay for a major facelift that would help save the rockets from further ruin.

Specifically, the rockets were restored with a new surface, new infrastructure and new guide wires to hold them in place. The renovated Space Park also features interactive exhibits to teach people about the U.S. Space Program.

The renovation project included the removal of a third member of the rocket display — the Saturn V Boattail.

Short and squat, this was a plywood and fiberglass replica of the bottom stage of the rocket that took the astronauts to the moon in 1969.

The Saturn booster was removed because it was only a facsimile and was in very deplorable condition, thus eliminating itself as a candidate for refurbishment.

While the rockets may not have the same flare of other World’s Fair attractions like the Unisphere or Shea Stadium, they remain an important link to the past as well as an enduring sign of limitless possibilities to future generations.

Queens Take-off! The 100th U.S. human space launch on June 27, 1995 (shown) took a piece of Queens with it . . . in the form of Borough President Claire Shulman’s daughter, Ellen Baker. Baker served as payload commander aboard the Space Shuttle Atlantis flight that featured the first docking between the U.S. Shuttle and the Russian Space Station Mir. The crew was a American and Russian. Baker graduated from Bayside High School in 1970 and completed her first mission in 1989. The mission was not Baker’s last, as she has completed two more since. (Bottom left) Borough President Claire Shulman with her daughter Ellen Baker (center) and Lee Katzman.