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Vol. XXVI • No. 9
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Space Center’s New Rocket Park Nears Completion It is springtime, and for many of us, the warm weather turns our thoughts to gardening, planting, cultivating and renewing our surroundings. The same tasks are happening right now at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center, a popular museum in Huntsville, Ala., although its plantings are considerably taller. Rather than daisies or geraniums, workers are planting rockets in the museum’s garden — and those roots run very deep in this north Alabama city. Since 1960, Huntsville has been the home of NASA’s George C. Marshall Space Flight Center, helping it earn the nickname “The Rocket City.” The facility was built near Huntsville’s Redstone Arsenal, a World War II-era base that was later chosen by the U.S. Army as a site for rocket and missile development. Toward the end of the war, the U.S. military brought several German rocket scientists, led by Wernher von Braun, to Huntsville to work with American specialists in creating ballistic rockets. In the 1950s and
‘60s, von Braun and his team lent their expertise to engineering some of the first rockets and satellites to reach outer space and orbit the Earth, in addition to the legendary and massive Saturn V rocket that sent America’s Apollo astronauts to the moon, thus achieving the goal of preeminence in space. Since then, Huntsville and the Marshall Space Flight Center has continued to be world renowned for its engineering efforts to put humans in space. New Park to Be Forest of Tall Rockets Ed Stewart, the curator of the U.S. Space & Rocket Center, told Huntsville’s WAAYTV April 15 that the museum’s upgraded “rocket park” will be like nothing anyone has ever seen. “If you’ve been here before and you’ve walked through ‘Rocket Row,’ as I like to call it, this will be a much different experience,” he said. see ROCKET page 6
U.S. Space & Rocket Center photo
The new multi-million-dollar project elevates refurbished rockets onto pedestals, surrounded by new landscape and hardscape.
Resurfacing Projects Worth $40M Under Way Across Southwest Ala.
ALDOT photo
Resurfacing work being done in Mobile area.
Making roads safer to drive is the mission of the Alabama Department of Transportation (ALDOT) as it continues with its federally aided Maintenance Resurfacing Program statewide. In roads, like life, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. With that in mind, ALDOT works with the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) to slow the deterioration of the state’s roads and, in turn, maximize the impact of every dollar spent. By using ALDOT’s Pavement Preservation Policy, the agency’s area employees evaluate the condition of pave-
ment near them and make recommendations to the department’s deputy director of operations, who approves projects for each fiscal year. The policy defines two types of road maintenance projects: preventive maintenance and minor rehabilitation. Federal dollars pay 90 percent of the cost of these projects, with state funds accounting for the remaining 10 percent. To equitably distribute maintenance funds around Alabama, ALDOT organizes the state into five regions, which, in turn, are divided into areas and districts. Each area is allocated funds based on the num-
ber of state highway lane miles it contains. Preventative maintenance projects extend the “functional adequacy” or lifespan of pavement and are done on structurally sound surfaces. In some cases, drivers may not have noticed any deterioration in the road when the preventative maintenance project is finished. The work involves removing and replacing surfaces, sealing cracks, patching, applying safety layers and high friction surfaces, stabilizing slabs, and, in many cases, includes replacing guard rails. Minor rehabilitation projects, on the see ROAD page 6