ST. CLOUD — A space shuttle replica owned by a St. Cloud native landed here this weekend after a week-long journey from Florida to Minnesota.
The 25-ton aircraft traveled along winding roads, often through small towns, and because of the vehicle’s size, police officers from each state drove both at the front and rear of the transport.
“Each state needs its own permits, and then they have to coordinate with each other,” said shuttle owner Felicity John Pederson. “There are so many ways things can go wrong, so when it all works out, it’s really nice.”
The shuttle prototype, called “Inspiration,” entered Minnesota just after midnight Saturday and arrived in St. Cloud a few hours later. On Monday, workers from a local company began welding a stand to store the shuttle while Pederson and others plan its future.
“Our first job is to define what this is and present it to our partners, particularly the large Minnesota companies that are in the aerospace industry,” Pederson said.
Pederson is a graduate of Apollo High School in St. Cloud, where NASA’s training capsules are located. He is the founder of LVX Systems, which has patented visible light communications. He is collaborating with NASA to develop the technology. He and his wife, Eileen, split their time between Florida and Minnesota.
In 2015 they released a full-sized Shuttle ReplicaIt had fallen into disrepair and was on the verge of being demolished, but was restored at a cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
“I think this is one of the most amazing donations I’ve ever made in my life,” said Pederson, who hopes to see the shuttle put on permanent display in a large dome as part of a new educational facility called the Inspiration Spaceport, which will also feature other spacecraft, hold talks and exhibits about space travel and sell tickets for virtual tours of space.
NASA’s Space Shuttle program ended in 2011 after more than 130 missions. Two missions were marred by tragic accidents: Columbia was destroyed on re-entry and Challenger broke up after launch, both killing all seven crew members.
But other missions have awe-stricken millions of people across the country, especially the kids of Gen X and millennials who grew up dreaming of visiting space, and Democratic state Sen. Arik Putnam, a local backer of the project, hopes to share that joy and amazement with a new generation.
“I’m so happy to have the opportunity to inspire young people to be more ambitious, to have big ideas and big hopes,” he said.
The other shuttles that went into space are now on display coast to coast: Discovery is in Washington, DC; Atlantis is at the Kennedy Space Center; and Endeavour is in Los Angeles. Enterprise, the prototype orbiter that never flew but paved the way for the shuttle program, is on display in New York; and another replica, called Independence, is on display atop a shuttle carrier in Houston.
Jim Bank, a Minnesota native and former Florida aerospace journalist, said Pederson’s replica shuttle was built as a tourist attraction by the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in the early 1990s.
“The attraction opened outside the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame. It was originally called ‘Shuttle to Tomorrow,’ and it was basically a theater where you went into the cargo bay, put on headphones and watched a movie,” Bank said Monday.
After Pederson acquired the shuttle model, it was moved to the Shuttle Landing Facility, now used by Space Florida, a government agency that works with private 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 accommodate an expanding commercial company, and Pederson decided to move the giant craft back to his hometown. “Inspiration Spaceport ISP” Facebook page.
“I think this is a great opportunity for St. Cloud and the whole state of Minnesota to have this shuttle model on display,” Bank said. “Even if you don’t fly in space, I’m sure it will live up to the name ‘Inspiration’ for people who come and learn about the space program.”