Jul. 4—Standing under a giant globe, Dan Provo promises visitors to the Oklahoma History Center that “we’ll share the whole world with you.”

But the exhibition “Launch to Landing: Oklahomans and Space” has the right stuff to transport museumgoers even beyond the stars.

“One of the distinctions that Oklahoma has is that it is the only state in the United States that has had a person in every human spaceflight program from the United States ... coupled with the fact that there’s an extraordinary number of scientists and engineers and Mission Control people that have come from Oklahoma,” said Provo, the Oklahoma History Center’s director.

“It always surprises people.”

A labor of love 10 years in the making, “Launch to Landing” explores the vast influence of Oklahoma on the U.S. space program.

“Literally, we had set up the final elements of it and then the pandemic hit — and everything changed. But even if it changes, you can’t let it stop you. You’ve got to keep going,” Provo said.

“Launch to Landing” features a NASA Mission Control console, space shuttle heat shield tiles, a space sleeping bag, astronaut food and “lunar samples,” more commonly known as moon rocks.

In addition, the exhibit includes flight suits worn by astronauts Fred Haise, the lunar module pilot on the famously failed Apollo 13 mission who attended the University of Oklahoma and served in the Oklahoma Air National Guard; Gordon Cooper, the Shawnee native who was the youngest of the seven original astronauts in Project Mercury, the country’s first human space program; and John Herrington, the Wetumka native and Chickasaw Nation citizen who became the first enrolled member of a Native American tribe to fly in space.

“Launch to Landing” also delves into the accomplishments of Lt. Gen. Thomas Stafford, a Weatherford native who flew on two Gemini missions and went on to command both Apollo 10, the second crewed mission to orbit the Moon, and the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project flight, the first joint U.S.-Soviet space mission.

“He’s 90 and he’s still very, very active,” Provo said. “These are people that in every sense of the word are extraordinary, extraordinary Americans that have a level of bravery that is also exceptional. When you think about particularly the early fellows that put themselves up on the top of intercontinental ballistic missiles and shot into space, that’s an extraordinary feat of courage.”

The exhibit also showcases the accomplishments of trailblazing women in the space program who have Oklahoma ties.

More: You can learn about history of Oklahoma’s 13 Black towns on this motorcycle tour

Eileen Collins, the first female pilot and first female commander of a space shuttle, trained at Enid’s Vance Air Force Base.

Pauls Valley native Donna Shirley made history as the first woman to manage a NASA program: At the Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, Shirley, an aerospace engineer who grew up in Wynnewood, led the Mars Exploration Program as well as the the team that built Sojourner, the first rover to land on Mars.

“Shannon Lucid counts Bethany as her hometown, and she flew in space seven times. That’s amazing,” Provo said.

The centerpiece of “Launch to Landing” is the Skylab 4 Apollo Command Module (CM-118), which carried the final Skylab crew of astronauts— Commander Gerald Carr, science pilot Edward Gibson and pilot William Pogue, an Okemah native — into space to live and work in the Skylab Orbiting Laboratory, or Space Station. The final Skylab mission, which lasted from Nov. 16, 1973, to Feb. 8, 1974, was the longest mission flown by any Apollo command module, spending a total of 84 days in space.

“Up until a couple of months ago, this spacecraft held the record for the longest continuous duration flight of a manned us spacecraft. It was only the SpaceX Dragon, after it had been at the space station for months, that surpassed it,” Provo said.

In 2018, Oklahoma History Center began working to transfer the Gemini VI space capsule formerly displayed there to the Stafford Air & Space Museum in Weatherford as part of a group effort involving the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum and the Kansas Cosmosphere. The move made it possible for the History Center to collaborate with the Smithsonian Institution to bring the Apollo command module to OKC.

“We took that end of the building off ... to bring this in — and the building was actually designed to do that,” Provo said, standing in the exhibit in the west wing of the History Center’s first-floor Gaylord Special Exhibit Gallery.

“We took the doors off the gallery, we made the door bigger and cut a hole in the wall to bring this in and then rebuilt around it. We also went back to the engineers of record for the building, Wallace Engineering, and said, ‘OK, we’re bringing in this great big thing; it weighs 11,500 pounds. We want to make sure that the floor is stressed for that, that everything about this works.’”

Bringing in the uncommon — and uncommonly large — national treasure became even more complicated last year once the COVID-19 outbreak came to the USA.

“This was moving the spacecraft here in the heart of the pandemic, which means we had to get it from Washington, D.C. to Oklahoma, while the Smithsonian was closed, and cross multiple states. Everything about it made it significantly more challenging,” Provo said.

“But this is the real deal. This is part of what is so special, to be able to share not only the stories of these amazing individuals, but some of the the hardware associated with them.”

With the spacecraft at its center, the permanent exhibit debuted last fall to mark the History Center’s 15th anniversary.

“This is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen. ... It’s impressive to see how massive that is,,” said Christina Hanna, of San Diego, California, during a recent visit to the History Center.

“Then, the fact that your phone has more technology embedded in it than that, it makes me even more impressed.”

Although a cellphone indeed boasts more computing power than the Apollo command module, Provo said the space program has frequently turned science fiction into science fact.

“Out of the space program came wireless, cordless tools, came laptops, came digital cameras, came wireless mice, came space blankets, came cordless vacuums. ... So, the impact of space on people’s everyday life is profound,” he said.

“Those stories are part of what we explore here, part of what we celebrate here, part of what we share with people, hopefully, to encourage them to further explore, to research and to appreciate the scope and breadth of what Oklahoma has meant to the space program.”

Where: Oklahoma History Center, 800 Nazih Zuhdi Drive.

Information: https://www.okhistory.org/historycenter or 405-522-0765.