Space Flight and the KYNASAO2T Space Shuttle Orbiter Model

by Anne Rivera

There's nothing quite like first opening a boxed model set, inspecting all the parts and pieces and creating that perfect picture in your head of your model already constructed. Those first moments could only be eclipsed after many hours of hard and dedicated work when you've finally pieced the model together and carefully placed on their designed spots the last couple of stickers. For space buffs, the KYNASAO2T Space Shuttle Orbiter allows you to imagine that beautiful ship on its flights to and from the space orbital stations. You could just picture that ship standing tall in the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, strapped to one main rocket and two boosters and with the speakers blaring out that familiar countdown. After that comes the fiery blast as it lifts up towards the skies. You could also picture that shuttle docking to the Mir Space Station, its baydoors opening as the astronauts in their spacesuits slowly float out of the vehicle as they do their spacewalks. Man's destiny, perhaps, is in the stars; the model of the space shuttle you hold in your hands a manifestation of so many men's dreams.

What a history the space shuttle orbiter has. The first completed Space Shuttle Orbiter, Enterprise, was created just for tests to see how the design would hold up in the atmosphere. It wasn't initially supposed to be called Enterprise. The plan was to call the Space Shuttle Orbiter, Constitution. However, people began writing to NASA to call it Enterprise, coming from the USS Enterprise from the TV show Star Trek. NASA agreed to this; it wouldn't be a stretch to suppose that there were also some Star Trek fans in NASA's ranks. The Enterprise made its flights starting in 1976 and the success of these tests proved that the design for the shuttles worked well.

KYNASAO2T however, is the Discovery, which is one of NASA's three working space shuttles. The Discovery has had 34 flights so far with the 35th one coming the last day of May, 2008. This 2010, the Discovery is set to be de-comissioned with that Space Shuttle Orbiter being replaced by the newer Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle. The model spacecraft, of course, would presumably be available long after 2010, but collectors are getting them now to add to their collections. The Discovery, along with its sister shuttles have been a part of history, and have in many times caught the public's eye. One only has to remember the Columbia and Challenger disasters that have made people remember not to take for granted these space missions and earned a greater respect for these astronauts.

After the model is finished and everything has been set to dry, why not show a child the Space Shuttle Orbiter? Perhaps the experience of being able to touch well-made models of these spacecrafts could awaken in the child a greater interest in science and learning. He doesn't really have to become interested in being an astronaut, exactly, but he could be interested in being an engineer, or an inventor, perhaps. And perhaps he'd have an idea of just what is truly possible when we as people work together to create the means to reach our dreams.