I'm interested in hearing about and seeing pictures of the kinds of space-related geegaws, doodads, mementos, and other artifacts that other space nuts have collected!

Here's one to share to start things off. In September 1969, my dad went on a VIP tour of the Manned Spaceflight Center (now Johnson) and Kennedy Spaceflight Center. (He got to see Apollo 12 being assembled in the VAB! I'm trying to get copies of his slides.) Anyway, one of the things he was given was this 15 inch by 22 inch (38 x 56 cm), three-dimensional, vacuformed plastic replica of part of the model used for lunar landing simulator trainers. This is a part of Apollo Site 3, in Sinus Medii. The raised surface depicted is roughly 650 meters on a side, too small to be seen in the Apollo 10 photos of the area. I have not been able to find Lunar Orbiter photos of the area. There is no vertical exaggeration in scale.

Well - I have a tiny little piece of spare Beagle 2 Heatshield material...it's just like the cork you might make a cork board out of, but a little more fiberous and fine grained. I've always been more interested in unmanned spaceflight than manned spaceflight ( although I do love a good EVA ) - and so if I was going to smash some cash on something - I'd really really like a tiny bit of the Stardust return capsule, or a bit of spare MLI from New Horizons - just a little bit of the 'stuff' from which these dreams are made.

Other than that...er... a ballast slug from a Renault F1 car and a smashed piece of Minardi F1X2 wheel rim from a race at Rockingham...ooops - sorry, wrong subject - but they're cool

I like yours - I think someone's done some little relief maps of mars that you can buy - I'm tempted by the Gusev one

Doug

That vac-form is a gorgeous item! Very nice, a real treasure - ephemeral, too.

I have:

o Tomato seeds flown aboard the LDEF
o A badge flown aboard Resurs-500 in 1992
o The Challenger flown philatelic cover

and:

o A range of meteorites and tektites

And some coal from the Titanic debris field.

I believe the chap that went after Gus Grissom's Mercury capsule (I tried to persuade Bob Ballard to go for it back in the 80s!) has expressed an interest in hunting for Apollo-era S-1C debris downrange from Cape Kennedy, which would be a serious opportunity for us memorabilia collectors to have parts of the first manned vehicles to go to the Moon. I really *must* get myself organised and buy one of the Data Acquisition Camera film frames recovered from the ocean, real soon now...

Bob Shaw

I have one other goodie I'm proud of - a 1-inch square piece of Kapton foil which was cut from LM-2 while they were prepping in for display in the National Air & Space Museum in Washington.

And, in writing this, I have just learned about the thriving market in space collectibles. I had no idea!

Why didn't Robert Ballard go after Grissom's Mercury spacecraft?

Did you ask him before or after he found the Titanic in 1985?

Besides the off-the-air audiotapes of manned and unmanned spaceflights that my brother and I taped, starting with the launch of Ranger 3 and John Glenn's first 2 orbits, my biggest "collectible" is a probably essentially complets set of Viking Lander 1 and 2 Experiment Data Record LANTERN SLIDES. (Not 35mm... the large format slides sandwiched in glass and fastened around the edges with aluminum strips!). Ray Arvidson, my thesis advisor, was discarding them and I just new that the right place for them was not the trash. Sets had been made and distributed to (I believe) all the primary mission imaging team members, and for most of them, they were of little use. (I think lantern slides were primarily used in Europe, and less commonly in the US for large-auditorium presentations.)

Way too much to list
Some Russian Sokol and Orlan space suit gloves

I asked him *after* he found the Titanic, and although he expressed an interest that was as far as it went. I'll dig out my correspondence with him sometime to see his exact words.

Bob Shaw

Are you sure it was spare? You might have some explaining to do....

I don't have any space bits, but have always just resisted the temptation to buy one of these.

As for other bits, I have a valve from a WWII Hurricane's Merlin engine. I very smugly showed it to my Dad, and said "What's this then?".

He looked at it for all of 10 msec, and said "Its the inlet valve for a Merlin engine. Where did you get that?". I had forgotten he started his career as an apprentice draughtsman at Rolls-Royce...

Chris

Did you mention *pictures*?

Go on, go on, go on.

Bob Shaw

Yes, PICTURES!!!!

I have a couple of medallions, melted out of space hardware that has returned, and a piece of thrust control hardware from an early shuttle mission. Sorry, no pictures.

A cute item in Dad's kitchen drawer is a flat-faced metal shaping hammer (can't remember it's actual type name) used on the first prototype Republic P-47 Thunderbolt when my dad worked there before WW-II.

I have a piece of Skylab (really)

I also have some of the microscopic latex beads manufactured on the Challenger while in space.

Also have a PC board out of B-52 bomb bay controller (CSRL) that I turned into a clock.

(one of those swords to plowshares things )


Dad found a weird rock when I was a kid, it was even magnetic, but the university said it was not a meteorite. Too bad, it was heavy.

Well since we are now mentioning aircraft parts, I have a boxfull of scrap I picked up while wandering parts of Edwards AFB where I shouldn't have been. Found a nice round crater about ten feet wide and some kicking and sifting revealed wires, cables, cracked fiberglass, and even a sheared-off half-inch steel bolt.

I show off that bolt quite frequently. Who knows what exotic test vehicle (probably from the 1960s) it once belonged to.

Do tell...

Bob Shaw

Skylab posters with a fragment of Skylab recovered from the Australian desert were sold via mail order in the early 80s.

My 'chunk' was identified as a piece of fiberglas from tankage of some kind.

I think the ad might have run in a magazine called Final Frontier.

Might have been Ad Astra too.

Long time to remember. Still have the poster in the mailing tube it was shipped in.

I figured I was doing my part in keeping the Australian outback litter free.

Well You could be amazed what's sitting in private collections, ranging from Martian meteorites to complete spacesuits ...
Just take a look at collectSpace.com