ST. CLOUD – A St. Cloud resident’s replica space shuttle landed here this weekend after a weeklong trip from Florida to Minnesota.
The journey took the 25-ton hulk over winding roads and often through small towns, with each state’s respective troopers riding in front and behind the transport vehicle due to its sheer size.
“Each state needs its own permits — and then you have to get them coordinated 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 they all went right.”
The shuttle mockup, dubbed the “Inspiration,” crossed into Minnesota just after midnight Saturday and reached St. Cloud a few hours later. On Monday, a team from a local company began welding together a stand to store the shuttle as Pederson and others planned for its future.
“Our first job is to define what this is and then present it to partners, potentially large companies here in Minnesota, especially if they are involved in the aerospace industry,” Pederson said.
Pederson is a graduate of Apollo High School in St. Cloud, which has a NASA training capsule on campus. He is the founder of LVX System, which has a patent for visible light communications, something he worked on with NASA. He and his wife Irene spend time in both Florida and Minnesota.
In 2015, they took ownership of the full-size shuttle replica, which had fallen into a state of disrepair and was set to be destroyed, and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to restore it.
“I think this is one of the coolest donations I’ve ever made in my life,” said Pederson, who hopes the shuttle can be put on permanent display in a large dome as part of a new educational “Inspiration Space Port” complex that also exhibits other space vehicles, hosts space-related speakers and exhibitions, and sells tickets for virtual tours of space.
NASA’s Space Shuttle program ended in 2011 with more than 130 missions flown. Two missions suffered heartbreak: the Columbia shuttle was destroyed as it entered the atmosphere and the Challenger disintegrated after launch, with both incidents claiming the lives of seven crew members.
But the other missions inspired awe among millions of people across the country, especially Gen X and Millennial kids who grew up dreaming about 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 just excited for the opportunity to inspire our young people to be more ambitious and to have big ideas and big hopes,” he said.
The other shuttles that have seen space can now be seen on shore: Discovery is in Washington, DC, Atlantis is at Kennedy Space Center, and Endeavor is in Los Angeles. The Enterprise, a prototype orbiter that did not fly but paved the way for the shuttle program, is on display in New York. And another replica, called the Independence, can be seen atop a shuttle plane 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 opened outside of the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame. It was originally called Shuttle to Tomorrow and was essentially a theater where you walked into the cargo bay and … wore these headphones and watched a movie,” Banke said Monday.
After Pederson acquired the shuttle model, it was moved to the shuttle landing facility now used by the government agency Space Florida, which works with commercial space companies such as Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
Last fall, Space Florida told Pederson to move the shuttle as quickly as possible to make way for the commercial expansion — prompting Pederson to move the behemoth to his hometown. People can follow the company on the “Inspiration Space Port ISP” Facebook page.
“I think this is a great opportunity for St. Cloud and all of Minnesota to have a shuttle model like this on display,” Banke said. “Even if it never flew in space, I guarantee it will live up to its name ‘Inspiration’ for all who see it and learn about the space program.”