Special events celebrate a giant step for mankind

U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Ala.

What does it feel like to blast off toward the moon? Find out at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, an Alabama town where the saying goes, "You can't throw a rock without hitting a rocket scientist." (Home to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville reportedly has the nation's highest population of engineers per capita.)

Give gravity a spin in the center's G-Force Accelerator, step inside the Apollo Cockpit Trainer or hang on for a white-knuckle ride on the Space Shot, where you rocket 140 vertical feet in 2½ seconds and feel 4 G's of force upon launch.

"It's not for the faint of heart," said center spokesman Al Whitaker, who should know: Hours after the only time he rode the Space Shot, he had a heart attack. "That was from years of eating deep-fried Southern food -- not the ride."

In honor of the upcoming 40th anniversary, the center commissioned a coffee table book featuring the art of one of NASA's first graphic artists, Paul Calle.

"Paul was the only person given total access to the Apollo 11 astronauts in the days leading up to the launch," Whitaker said. "He was there in the White Room that morning for their breakfast, doing all these sketches."

Calle will be signing copies of his Celebrating Apollo 11 on July 20.

Visitors can take a stroll on a replica of the lunar landscape and check out one of the center's newest additions: the trailer used to quarantine Apollo 12 astronauts for two weeks after their lunar mission "in case they had some funky moon virus," Whitaker said. This Airstream-like trailer eventually ended up as lodging for college students at a catfish research facility.

"We literally found this thing in a field behind a deserted fish hatchery in southern Alabama," Whitaker said. "It's almost like a national treasure."

from the Chicago Sun Times