ST. CLOUD — The space shuttle replica owned by a St. Cloud resident landed here this weekend after a weeklong trip from Florida to Minnesota.
The procession took the 25-ton fuselage along winding roads and often through small towns, while each state’s respective troopers rode in front and behind the vehicle due to its sheer size.
“Each state needs its own permits — and then you have to get them to coordinate with each other,” said Felicity-John Pederson, the shuttle’s owner. “There are so many things that can go wrong, so you’re so happy when every one of them goes right.”
The shuttle mock-up, called Inspiration, passed over Minnesota shortly after midnight Saturday and arrived in St. Cloud a few hours later. On Monday, a team from a local business began welding a storage rack to the shuttle while Pederson and others plan its future.
“Our first job is to define what that is and then start pitching it to partners, probably big companies here in Minnesota, especially if they’re involved in the space industry,” Pederson said.
Pederson is a graduate of St. Cloud’s Apollo High School, which boasts a NASA learning capsule on its campus. He is the founder of the LVX System, which has a patent for visible light communication, something he worked on with NASA. He and his wife, Irene, spend some time in Florida and Minnesota.
In 2015, they took ownership of the full-scale shuttle replica, which had fallen into disrepair and was about to be destroyed, and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars restoring it.
“I think it’s one of the coolest donations I’ve ever made in my life,” said Pederson, who hopes the shuttle can be permanently displayed in a large dome as part of a new Inspiration Space Port educational complex. which will also display other space vehicles, host speakers and exhibits related to space travel, and sell tickets for virtual tours of space.
NASA’s space shuttle program ended in 2011 with over 130 missions completed. Two missions were aborted: the space shuttle Columbia was destroyed on reentry, and Challenger disintegrated after launch, both incidents claiming the lives of seven crew members.
But the other missions have inspired millions of people across the country, especially Gen Xers and millennials who grew up with dreams of visiting space. DFL State Sen. Aric Putnam, a local supporter of the project, hopes to bring that joy and wonder to new generations.
“I’m excited about the opportunity to inspire our young people to be more ambitious and have big ideas, big hopes,” he said.
The other shuttles that have seen outer space are now on display along shores: Discovery is in Washington, D.C., Atlantis is at the Kennedy Space Center, and Endeavor is in Los Angeles. Enterprise, a prototype orbiter that didn’t fly but paved the way for the shuttle program, is on display in New York. Another replica, called Independence, is displayed atop a shuttle in Houston.
Jim Banke, a Minnesota native and former aerospace journalist in Florida, said the replica of Pederson’s shuttle was built as a tourist attraction by the Kennedy Space Center visitor complex in the early 1990s.
“This attraction was opened in front of the American Astronaut Hall of Fame. It was originally called Shuttle to Tomorrow and it was basically a theater where you went into the cargo bay and … you put on these headphones and watch a movie,” Banke said Monday.
After Pederson acquired the shuttle mockup, it was moved to the shuttle landing facility, which is now used by the government’s Space Florida agency, which works with commercial space companies such as Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
Last fall, Space Florida told Pederson it needed to move the shuttle as soon as possible to make way for commercial expansion — prompting Pederson to move the giant to his hometown. People can follow the venture on the “Inspiration Space Port ISP” Facebook page.
“I think it’s a great opportunity for St. Cloud and all of Minnesota to have a mock shuttle like this on display,” Banke said. “Even if it never flew in space, I guarantee it will live up to its name of ‘Inspiration’ to anyone who sees it and learns more about the space program.”
