Stafford Air and Space Museum: Four Missions from Weatherford

Weatherford, Oklahoma, is a small plains city of about twelve thousand people. It is also the hometown of Lieutenant General Thomas P. Stafford, one of the most widely traveled astronauts in history. Stafford flew four space missions: Gemini Six, Gemini Nine, Apollo Ten, and the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project in nineteen seventy-five, commanding three of them.

Apollo Ten was the full dress rehearsal for the moon landing, taking the lunar module to within about nine miles of the lunar surface before pulling back. Stafford's mother had come to Oklahoma in a covered wagon and lived to see her son orbit the moon. The Stafford Air and Space Museum in Weatherford grew from a small airport display in the early nineteen eighties into a sixty-three-thousand-square-foot Smithsonian affiliate that displays the actual Gemini Six capsule, Stafford's Apollo Ten pressure suit, and one of the few Titan Two rocket vehicles on public display in the country.