How did a 154-foot-long piece of spacecraft wind up abandoned along the side of a Florida road?
DURING A SERVICE ROAD A 154-foot-long relic from the US Space Shuttle program is located near the St. Johns River in Florida. A rare opportunity to get up close and personal with a space shuttle component is provided by a test fuel tank that was constructed in 1977 and utilized for stress testing prior to any shuttles taking off.
This tank was on display at the Kennedy Space Center for a long time. However, NASA declared that the test fuel tank would be removed in order to create place for the defunct space shuttle Atlantis and a new display center after the place Shuttle program concluded in 2011. The Wings of Dreams Aviation Museum in Keystone Heights, Florida, purchased the tank at auction.
The large tank had to be transported from Kennedy Space Center to Green Cove Springs, where it would be kept temporarily until being moved to its eventual location, using a 200-foot barge, two tugboats, and cranes, according to Abandoned Florida. However, the logistics of relocating such a large structure proved challenging, and it appears that the fuel tank found its permanent home at that makeshift staging area. The Wings of Dreams Aviation Museum closed in 2019 after being housed in Green Cove Springs since 2013.
