FLASHBACK FRIDAY: Encapsulating History

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  • By 920th Rescue Wing Public Affairs
RAF WOODBRIDGE, England --  This week on Flashback Friday, we set the wayback machine to March 4, 1982, where we find ourselves in the frigid waters of the North Sea just off the coast of southeast England.

It was here on this day that the 67th Aerospace Rescue and Recovery Squadron (ARRS) took part in training for astronaut recovery for NASA's manned-spaceflight program.

To maximize realism of the training, the squadron used a mockup -- called a "boilerplate" -- of NASA's Apollo command module.

The advent of the space shuttle program soon eliminated the need for such training, and the 67th ARRS sent boilerplate #1206 to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C.

With the new shuttle mission, support for all NASA launches eventually fell to the 920th Rescue Wing at Patrick AFB, Fla., where, in front of the pararescue squadron now sits NASA boilerplate #1206, on loan from the Smithsonian Institution.

In an odd turn of fate, the 920th has recently begun training with NASA boilerplates.

It turns out  NASA's next evolution in manned spaceflight is the Orion MPCV (Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle), a direct throwback to the space capsules used in the Apollo Program.

Wing pararescuemen began testing with a mockup of Orion in April 2009. NASA announced it will launch an unmanned test flight of Orion sometime in 2014.