Background
The Kansas Cosmosphere & Space Center (KCSC):
Second only to the Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum in terms
of collection size, the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center (KCSC),
located in Hutchinson, Kansas, is one of the leading collectors of space
artifacts in the United States; the items collected, many of which have
flown in space, provide a complete overview of rocketry and space
history from its origins in Nazi-era Germany, to the Space Race of the
1950s and 1960s, and to the era of détente between Russia and
America in the 1970s. Items housed include complete German V-1 and
V-2 rockets, a Redstone Nuclear Warhead, a Titan rocket, a Russian
Vostok Spacecraft, The Mercury 7 Liberty Bell spacecraft, and the
Apollo 13 Command Module. Their holdings also include the largest
collection of Russian Space Program artifacts outside of the former
Soviet Union (Kansas Cosmosphere, 2009).