posted 10-30-2020 10:56 AM               

"Every year we do a display where we try to involve our skeletons in doing something realistic," Ken Kovacin explained. "This year, we felt like doing a space theme because my whole family is still doing what we used to do in the 60s: Watching space launches."

Out on the lawn, the launch control engineers are working at a console that Kovacin, who has a professional background in engineering, designed using photographs of the actual launch console at the Cape Kennedy Launch Control Center.

Everything down to the smallest detail is included in the model — from the switches and knobs on the console, to images of the actual Gemini 12 takeoff on the mock video screens, to the headsets and ID badges the NASA skeletons are wearing. In fact, one of the skeletons, dressed in a brown vest and holding an old landline phone as he stands in front of the other engineers, is modeled after Gene Kranz, the Gemini 12 launch director, Ken Kovacin said. His ID badge, pinned to his vest, reads "Gene Tibia."

posted 10-31-2020 02:37 PM               

As an added bonus, a replica of the Explorer I satellite, the first U.S. satellite launched into space, will serve as a no-contact candy disbursement machine on Halloween.