How Has Huntsville Changed Since You Attended Space Camp?

1) The Davidson Center for Space Exploration opened at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center. The U.S. Space & Rocket Center opened in 1970 as one building and Rocket Park. While the original museum expanded over time, and the Space Camp Habitats were built after Space Camp opened in 1982, one of the more visible additions to the Rocket Center is the Davidson Center for Space Exploration, named after Dr. Julian Davidson, founder of Davidson Technologies.The 68,000-square-foot building opened on Jan. 31, 2008, and was designed to house the National Historic Landmark Saturn V Moon Rocket, which previously resided outdoors. The Saturn V is elevated above the floor surface with separated stages and engines exposed, so guests and trainees have the opportunity to walk underneath the rocket. The Davidson Center also features a National Geographic 3D Theater. 2) Bus Tours of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center In 1972, the Rocket Center began offering bus tours of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, located in Huntsville. The tours were suspended in 2001 following the terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington D.C., on Sept. 11. Due to public interest, the bus tours returned on July 20, 2012, the 43rd anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. The tours are now offered daily.

3) Arts in Huntsville The arts have always played a significant role in Huntsville culture, and the German rocket team that came to the city in 1950 had a lot to do with that. Those rocket scientists and there family were instrumental in founding the Huntsville Symphony Orchestra. Recent years, however, have seen a boom in artistic opportunities, and Huntsville is now home to the largest privately owned arts facility in the United States. Lowe Mill ARTS & Entertainment, just a few miles from the Rocket Center, is located in a former mill and warehouse. Lowe Mill opened in 2004, and currently has 129 public studios and more than 200 working artists. The Huntsville Museum of Art, opened in 1970, is located in Big Spring Park in downtown Huntsville. This nationally-accredited museum has a variety of exhibitions throughout the year, including prestigious traveling exhibits and showcases the work of nationally and regionally acclaimed artists. Huntsville is also home to Arts Huntsville, an organization dedicated to supporting community engagement by advancing the arts, entertainment and culture to enrich education, and economic development in Huntsville. 4) Development of Downtown Huntsville Since 2006, the downtown area of Huntsville has grown at a steady pace. Downtown Huntsville, Inc., has led a revitalization plan to create a vibrant, diverse and economically sustainable area that includes residential space as well as many new areas of shopping, restaurants, music and technology venues. These include business incubators, food trucks, craft breweries and more. 5) Growth of Cummings Research Park Located in Huntsville and near the U.S. Space & Rocket Center, Cummings Research Park is the second largest research park in the U.S. and the fourth largest in the world. Opened in the early 1960s, Cummings Research Park has continued to grow as major competitor in the fields of science, technology and research. One example of growth is HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology, which opened in 2008, and is the cornerstone of the 153-acre CRP Biotech Campus. A not-for-profit organization, HudsonAlpha has a four-fold mission of conducting genomics-based research to improve human health and well being; implementing genomic medicine, sparking economic development; and providing educational outreach to nurture the next generation of biotech researchers and entrepreneurs, as well as to create a biotech literate public. Huntsville continues to play a dominant role in science and technology fields, with an estimated 35,000 people, or 16.9% of the population, employed in STEM careers. By capita, Huntsville ranks behind only Framingham, Mass., and San Jose, Ca. 6) Eastern Airlines A major U.S. airline for 65 years, Eastern was the first "Official Airline of Space Camp." In June 1967, Eastern Airlines introduced "The Space Corridor" linking Huntsville with aerospace centers in St. Louis and Seattle and also with the NASA Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The airline ceased operations in 1991. Today, trainees from around the world arrive at the Huntsville International Airport, which offers services from Delta Air Lines, American Airlines, United Airlines, and GLO. A discount is offered to trainees arriving via Delta.

7) Malls and Shopping Areas In the 1980s and 1990s, Huntsville had three major shopping malls: Parkway City Mall, Heart of Huntsville Mall and Madison Square Mall. None of the malls exist in their original form today. Parkway City Mall was torn down and a new facility was built, Parkway Place Mall, which opened in 2002. Heart of Huntsville Mall, also known as "Market Square," was demolished in 2007 to make way for a mixed-use development called Constellation. This development is still in progress. Madison Square Mall was demolished in early 2017. A new development, called MidCity Huntsville, will begin construction on the Madison Square Mall site later this year.' In addition, Huntsville is now home to Bridge Street Town Centre, a mixed-use lifestyle center that has 70 shops and restaurants, a hotel and a 14-screen theater. 8) Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) Huntsville is home to Redstone Arsenal, a garrison for a number of military and space tenants. BRAC has significantly changed Redstone’s population with the addition of the Army’s Aviation Command in 1995, a move that brought several thousand jobs to Huntsville. In 2005, the Army Materiel Command Headquarters moved to Redstone along with the Space and Missile Defense Command. This move also brought thousands of jobs to Huntsville and north Alabama. 9) The Vertical Saturn V A landmark of Huntsville, the vertical Saturn V at the Rocket Center was constructed in 1999. At 363 feet tall, the vertical Saturn V can be seen from miles away.

10) Movies in Huntsville Since the premiere of the film SpaceCamp in 1986, several movies have been filmed in Huntsville and at the Rocket Center. These include A Smile as Big as the Moon, Space Warriors, and The Mars Generation. 11) Craft Beer in Huntsville In 2013, the legislature passed a bill to allow craft breweries in Alabama to have taprooms. With that legislation, the Huntsville area has exploded with breweries, with nine locations now serving their own brew. In 2015, Campus 805 opened with two of the most popular breweries, Straight to Ale and Yellowhamer, on site. In 2016, Yellowhammer partnered with the Rocket Center to create T-Minus, a tangerine Kolsch that is now sold at Biergarten, held weekly at the Rocket Center March through October.

If you really want to see how Huntsville has changed since Space Camp opened in 1982, come see for yourself at this year's SummerFest!