Hutchinson, KS, is the most unlikely place to find a museum dedicated solely to space exploration. Though Kansas is the home state of three astronauts, Joe Engle, Ron Evans and Steve Hawley, it’s never been a launchpad of space exploration. Not even close. It’s 651 miles from Johnson Space Center in Houston, TX, and 1446 from Kennedy Space Center on Merritt Island, FL. But, Hutchinson is where you will find the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center.
The museum boasts the largest collection of US Space artifacts outside the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum and the largest collection of Russian Space artifacts outside of Moscow. It even has a Gemini Rocket and a Mercury Rocket that look like tall bookends on either side of the museum.
Like the big bang that created the universe, the Cosmosphere was born from a dream of Patricia Brooks Carey. Her goal to open a planetarium started with a used star projector and some rented chairs. It occupied space in the Poultry Building on the Kansas State Fairgrounds and was originally called Hutchinson Planetarium.
As time passed, the planetarium eventually flew the coop at the fairgrounds and grew into what is now called the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center. The Cosmosphere now resides in its own facility of nearly 105,000 square feet of space devoted to space exploration; with artifacts from German V-1 and V-2 rockets, to a Redstone Nuclear Warhead, to an actual moon rock, to the Apollo 13 Command Module “Odyssey.”
The success and expansive collection of the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center are perfect examples of what can happen when you dream big and aim for the stars.
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