Museum shrugs as Atlas rocket falls to Earth
Corroded cold-war artifact owned by U.S. air force which wants it cut up
The shiny Atlas rocket that has stood for decades outside the Canada Science and Technology Museum is now a wreck, its nose crumpled to one side and the whole rocket lying in the snow.
The rocket was brought down to Earth last week because museum officials feared it was so corroded that it might fall on someone. But it didn’t survive re-entry. The next step: Demolition. “We are proceeding with its dismantlement as agreed, planned and requested by the rocket’s owner, the USAF, and have received no instructions to the contrary to this day,” a museum spokesman said in an email.
“What has happened to the rocket is what we understood would happen to it in the absence/failure of a compressor to constantly maintain internal pressure: it is crumpling under its own weight …”
The rocket maintained its shape with pressurized air tanks, but since these began leaking the museum had been pumping in air from a compressor. It stopped pumping when the rocket came down.
Local historian Andrew King, who has been trying to persuade the museum to find a new home for the rocket at a science centre in Tennessee, found the collapsing wreck Friday. “This is terrible,” he said. Built in the 1950s, the Atlas was an early version of a type that could either carry a nuclear warhead or launch satellites into orbit.
The rocket remains the property of the U.S. air force, which stipulated that when it is no longer on display it must be cut into small pieces.
While the most obvious damage is to the nose section, “the fuselage is all banged up too,” King said.
King was out of town when the rocket was taken off its foundation.
He went Friday to see how it was stored, and saw the glint of sun off stainless steel in the snow in a back lot.
“Now it’s just a mess,” King said.