Most students probably cannot think of a time when the mammoth in front of Morrill Hall was not there.
But before the statue of the prehistoric beast stood guard outside the University of Nebraska State Museum, there was a different age represented: the Space Age.
From the early 1970s to the early 1990s, the Apollo 009 unmanned space capsule stood resolutely outside the museum. Jack Dunn, supervisor for the museum, is one of the few people who remember how the space capsule came to rest on the UNL campus.
In the early '70s, a NASA educational program came to UNL as ``The Space Mobile.'' This connection helped land the Apollo 009 in Lincoln.
``We helped them load their van,'' Dunn said. He and Allan Griesemer, a former museum employee, were told that NASA had several outdated artifacts that needed to be disposed of because of lack of storage space.
``NASA was in the space business, not artifact storage,'' Dunn said. He explained that at this point there was no one to take many old NASA items. Griesemer negotiated with the people at NASA and eventually worked out a deal to get the Apollo 009 capsule delivered to UNL.
The Apollo 009 is different from the Apollo 9 - the Apollo 009 was an unmanned spacecraft; the 009 was the serial number used.
NASA used the Apollo 009 to test the performance of the capsule and its parts. At one point, the Apollo 009 capsule was used to test a potential landing on land. After denting the frame by dropping the capsule from a crane, the idea was scrapped, and NASA continued with water landings.
``It was an interesting thing to have,'' Dunn said.
The capsule survived being shot into space and dropped from a crane, but the harsh Nebraska weather eventually wore it down.
With no way to move the capsule inside the museum and no funding to have it restored, the Apollo 009 needed to be moved.
In the early '90s, the capsule was taken and restored by Lincoln's Duncan Aviation before being placed inside a hangar in the Strategic Air and Space Museum in Ashland, where it currently resides.
Dunn recalls hearing various stories about the capsule, most notably one incident when he overheard a campus tour guide telling prospective students that the capsule was used to shoot a monkey into space.
``There was definitely no monkey.'' Dunn said with a chuckle.
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