Slowly Crumbling, NASA Landmarks May Face the Bulldozer
By STEFANO S. COLEDAN
Published: February 28, 2006
In February 1962, it was the hub of the space program, the center where controllers counted down and then watched tensely from their consoles as John Glenn became the first American to orbit Earth.
Today the Mercury Control Center stands empty and all but abandoned, half hidden by thick Florida vegetation. Its 10-foot-wide NASA emblem, warped by high winds, flaps even in a light breeze. A trash can on the floor of the hollow control room seems to be the only barrier against rain seeping through the crumbling ceiling.
And now the 45-year-old center may be slated for demolition, one of 12 sites and landmarks that the space agency says it may tear down to save money.
Situated on Air Force property, the control center, where NASA directed the flights of unmanned and manned space capsules from 1960 to 1965, is off limits to the public except for some tours.
It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. But Mario Busacca, federal preservation officer for NASA at the Kennedy Space Center here, said that as the agency prepared to replace the space shuttle with a safer vehicle and to return astronauts to the Moon, it needed to rid itself of deteriorated or useless sites, the sooner the better. He emphasized, however, that no decision had been made about the Mercury Control.
Restoration would be expensive. While fixing the control center roof would cost less than $1 million, about the cost of demolition, returning the building to its original state would shoot the price up to $5 million, said John H. Johnson, a retired colonel who was deputy commander of the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and is now director of the Apollo 1 Memorial Foundation, a group dedicated to preserving historic landmarks at the cape.
In 1999, Delaware North, a concessionaire that runs the visitors' complex for the space center, borrowed consoles and other equipment to copy the Mercury Control in a room at the complex. The equipment was to have been returned to the old building after the roof had been repaired.
But with the Mercury Control turned into an empty shell, the most compelling reason for refurbishing its roof evaporated, pushing maintenance work off the priority list. ''During the past five years, nothing has been done,'' Colonel Johnson said. Delaware North representatives declined to comment.
Meanwhile, the old center molders. In the men's room (still marked ''Gents''), someone has cordoned off the urinals with black-and-yellow plastic strips and masking tape. Flowers have been put into the fixtures; a sign claims that they were last used by the Mercury astronauts and now belong to the ''Smithsonian Institute Air & Space Museum.''
''We think it's a joke, but nobody is taking it down,'' Mr. Busacca said.
The plight of the Mercury Control Center is stirring mixed emotions on the part of NASA veterans. ''I don't have that kind of a feeling for it, frankly,'' said Christopher C. Kraft, the first flight director for agency and the principal designer of the space center. ''I have a lot of nostalgia for the people that worked there, but not the building.''
Colonel Johnson of the Apollo foundation called the building ''the original control center'' for America's human spaceflight program, and added: ''Are we going to take the Washington Monument down? If they take Mission Control down, then I might say we don't give a darn about anything.''
Thomas J. O'Malley, who pressed the button that sent Colonel Glenn into orbit, agreed. ''I think it's terrible,'' he said, adding that the Mercury building embodied a long-gone era.
''Back in 1962, a lot of that stuff was done by manual means,'' Mr. O'Malley said. ''We didn't have the sophisticated computers we have now. The launch of that Atlas, that was all manual help. You had to trust everybody that was out there working on it.''
Many historic space sites are being preserved by NASA, the Air Force and private organizations, including the two bunkers used to launch the first American satellite in 1958, as well as the astronauts Alan B. Shepard and Virgil I. Grissom in 1961; a whole Saturn V rocket and part of its launching tower; and a lunar module and an Apollo spacecraft from the ''Men Walk on Moon'' era.
The so-called White Room, used by Apollo astronauts to board their spacecraft, was salvaged by the actor Tom Hanks and used to film scenes for an HBO miniseries, ''From the Earth to the Moon.''
But other pieces of history have not been so lucky. In late December, this reporter watched as bulldozers crunched heaps of rusty pipes and smashed a few remaining concrete slabs, all that was left of a hangar that held one of two Viking landers that reached Mars in 1976.
A main concern for the space agency is pollution. Decontamination work costs millions. That is why in 2004 the space agency removed the launching tower used for two of its most historic missions, Apollo 8 and Apollo 11, and dispatched it to the blast furnace.
An engineering support building and 200 acres of land around it are soaked with a toxic solvent used to clean rocket parts. The site, Launch Complex 34, was used to launch the first Saturn rockets and was the site of America's first space tragedy, the Apollo 1 fire that killed three astronauts in a training session in 1967. Like Mercury Control, it is on the historic register.
But even this place is not being actively preserved, except for some caretaker work by members of the Apollo foundation.
A sign stenciled on a concrete pillar of the launching pedestal facing the Atlantic reads ''Abandon in Place.'' The sea breeze is accompanied by ocean spray that will continue to take its toll, eroding steel and concrete.
Charles B. Mars, a retired rocket engineer and a curator of the Space Walk of Fame museum in Titusville, a few miles from the space center, said he sympathized with NASA's financial situation. Although he hates to see the landmarks vanish, Mr. Mars said, ''Sometimes things need to be done.''
On the structure, a modern Stonehenge, someone has attached a small plaque that reads:
''In memory of those who made the ultimate sacrifice so others could reach for the stars.''
A Latin sentence follows: ''Ad astra per aspera'' -- a rough path leads to the stars. And then, ''Godspeed to the crew of Apollo 1.''
Photos: 'ABANDON IN PLACE' -- Above, Launch Complex 34, site of 60's Apollo tests, is not maintained. Mercury Control Center, below, was the hub of John Glenn's 1962 flight. (Photographs by Stefano S. Coledan for The New York Times)