A view that's out of this world

 

We've just completed Day Two of our grand road trip. The last couple of days have been an entertaining blend of space science, Wild West sights and natural wonders. Here are a few brief highlights.

Yesterday began with a visit to the International UFO Museum & Research Centre in Roswell. The walls of this cavernous warehouse-like building contain a series of simple displays, including original photographs and eyewitness accounts of the 1947 Roswell Incident. Sadly, the exhibit lacked a cohesive flow, with items often displayed in no meaningful sequence. As a result, much of the drama surrounding this controversial event was lost.

Our second tourist stop, the Roswell Museum & Art Centre, was a little more rewarding. Among its exhibits is a reconstruction of the lab operated by Dr Robert Goddard, the man who built the world’s first liquid fuel rocket. The lab is filled with his original tools and machinery, donated by his wife when she died in 1982. The museum also displays a variety of Goddard's early rocketry artefacts, including some of his earliest pioneering efforts.

We then headed west to Alamogordo, stopping briefly to take in the historic streetscape of Lincoln, where the outlaw Billy the Kid kicked off his infamous criminal exploits. These days, it's largely a ghost town. However, isolated buildings along Main Street have been beautifully restored, offering plenty of wild west covered verandahs and saloon-style facades. 

Most of them have been repurposed into museums and tourism ventures. We decided to satisfy ourselves with a simple drive-by tour. Unfortunately, I didn’t take any photos. Hence, I’ve pulled a few from the web to give you a taste of the town.

Our bed for the night was at the White Sands Motel, a classic, family-owned roadside motel. The original architecture and illuminated billboard sign have been lovingly preserved, while each room's interior has been meticulously restored. I loved it.

We spent today touring the New Mexico Museum of Space History and the spectacular sand dunes that give White Sands its name. The fully glazed, cuboid-shaped Space History Museum sits on a hill overlooking the town. In the distance, a jagged boundary of white dunes divides the desert plateau from the San Andreas mountains.

Many of the museum’s exhibits are devoted to the missile and rocket research conducted in the area. As a result, most exhibits are what’s known as boilerplates, or mockups, used in ground or flight testing rather than flight-ready hardware. It's also home to the International Space Hall of Fame. Although, to be honest, this particular exhibit proved to be little more than rows of plaques on a wall.

Its most iconic exhibit is the Little Joe II rocket, which tested the Apollo’s command module’s emergency escape rocket. This fat, stubby rocket was launched five times just a few miles down the road. Nearby stand two equally captivating rocket sleds used to test human tolerance for rapid deceleration.  Why test rapid deceleration? The answer is simple. The Air Force needed to know whether a pilot could survive an emergency cockpit ejection at near supersonic speeds. There's no point in installing an ejection seat if it's going to kill you. 

We learned that John Stapp reached a speed of 632 mph (1,017 km/h) on the appropriately coloured, racing-red Sonic Wind I in December 1954. He exceeded the land speed record at the time, making him the fastest man on Earth.  I was also reminded that the Space Shuttle (STS-3) landed near here once, just once, in 1982, when the original landing site at Edward’s Airforce Base flooded. The locals are clearly proud of this one-time contribution to the shuttle's test program.

I was also surprised to discover the gravesite for Ham the Astrochimp near the main entrance. He was the first chimpanzee sent into space, venturing aloft just a few months before Alan Shepard became the first American in space. He was buried here following his death in 1983.

We then drove out to the White Sands National Monument. National Parks in the USA are often called monuments. The area’s famous white sand consists of chalky, powdered gypsum, a rare form of sand. Gypsum dissolves readily in water and thus rarely survives long enough to form giant rolling dunes. The sand here really is white, at times impossibly white! 

A 16-mile scenic road loops through the dunes, offering one stunning vista after another. We stopped several times to trek, climb the lily-white dunes and admire the scene around us. Inevitably, we took plenty of stunning photos, just a few of which I've posted here. 

The park also offers a couple of educational walks, each signposted with a series of detailed information panels. For example, compared to other dune types, gypsum dunes remain moist during the longest droughts. This moisture prevents the dunes from blowing away. I can also testify that it makes them firmer and easier to walk on. 

Tonight we’re staying in Las Cruces, on the far side of the San Andreas mountains. However, we’ll briefly cross back to visit the White Sands Missile Range tomorrow.