Black Brant rockets into museum

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This article was published 10/09/2013 (4613 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Manitoba Museum will launch its new Made in Manitoba rocket ship exhibit today.

The Black Brant rocket, produced in Winnipeg for decades by Magellan Aerospace’s Bristol Aerospace division, is on display in the museum’s Science Gallery.

Scott Young, the museum’s manager of science communications and visitor experiences, said Monday the rocket has been in the museum since earlier this year, but now it comes with a full-fledged exhibit that officially opened on Monday.

“We have a video screen that interprets the rocket and tells the history of the Black Brant,” Young said.

“We even have video from a camera that was on the rocket so you can ride the rocket.”

In a statement, Don Boitson, Magellan Aerospace’s vice-president and general manager, said “the museum is the perfect place to display the Black Brant rocket.

“The Black Brant is an important piece of Manitoba’s heritage and showcases one of Manitoba’s significant contributions to the field of rocketry and space science.”

The Black Brant first blasted off on June 15, 1962, almost a year after the Soviet Union launched the first person into space, Yuri Gagarin, and a month later NASA launched Alan Shepard in a one-man Mercury rocket ship.

Since then, more than 1,000 unmanned Black Brants, named after a breed of geese, have been launched worldwide for scientific research, including by space agencies such as NASA.

The company has gifted the $100,000, nine-metre-long rocket to the museum to commemorate the craft’s 50th anniversary.

“They have studied the northern lights; they have been launched during eclipses,” Young said.

“They have done cutting-edge science for 50 years. It’s a really cool thing.

‘It’s the Science Gallery’s version of the museum’s Nonsuch’

— Manitoba Museum’s Scott Young

“It’s the Science Gallery’s version of the museum’s Nonsuch.”

The Nonsuch, a ship that sailed into Hudson Bay in 1668-69 as the first trading voyage for what would become the Hudson’s Bay Company, is commemorated in the museum by a full-size replica.

But Young said the museum’s Black Brant is no replica.

“It’s absolutely flight-worthy,” he said.

“It doesn’t have the electronics for getting a signal down, but it would fly. And some of the fins on it flew on previous flights.”

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca