DRYDEN HISTORY TAKES FLIGHT GALLERY AT PALMDALE CIVIC CENTER TO FEATURE NASA EXHIBITS.

Byline: Jim Skeen Staff Writer

PALMDALE - NASA Dryden Flight Research Center is turning a former jury assembly room at the Palmdale Civic Center into an exhibit hall.

The former courthouse room at Ninth Street East and Avenue Q-10 will become the Aerospace Exploration Gallery, which is to contain an ever-changing set of exhibits that depict NASA activities.

NASA is leasing the space for $1 a year, but is picking up the tab for operations and maintenance costs. The transformation is being done primarily by NASA workers and with just a few hundred dollars for materials, said Fred Johnson, director of public affairs for the NASA center at Edwards Air Force Base.

``Since 9-11 it's been more difficult for people to get onto the base,'' Johnson said. ``This is something here in the community for the public.''

Exhibits would include things like models, flight hardware, space and flight suits, and interactive displays, such as a small working wind tunnel.

The gallery is tentatively expected to be ready for the public in April, but already it's been put to use serving as a gathering spot for a recent NASA budget briefing.

The room features a small office area that looks like a building, adorned with a windsock, that might have been found on the NASA flight line back in the late 1940s or early 1950s. Plans call for installing a diorama which will depict a woman known as a ``computer'' - working on flight data.

In Dryden's early days, women called ``computers'' took raw data from aircraft instrumentation devices and made computations to turn out usable information of such factors as speed, fuel consumption, and the aircraft's center of gravity. The women who worked as computers were treated as junior engineers both in the tasks they were assigned and in their working relationship with the male engineers.

One of the artifacts in the room is the engine nozzle from an SR-71 Blackbird, a research plane capable of speeds over 2,000 mph. At the recent budget briefing, the nozzle was used as a TV stand.

``This is an opportunity for the entire community to use this facility,'' said Dryden Director Kevin Petersen. ``Hopefully we'll get a lot of education and public outreach from this facility.''

The courthouse opened in February 2001, bringing civil cases back to the Antelope Valley for the first time in 11 years. For lack of room in the old Lancaster courthouse at Avenue J-2 and 10th Street West, civil cases had been transferred out of the Antelope Valley, and half the valley's criminal cases are heard in courts in Van Nuys or elsewhere.

Not long after court cases were shifted to the Michael D. Antonovich Antelope Valley Courthouse in 2003, two of the four courtrooms were leased out to the AERO Institute, a consortium involving NASA, the city of Palmdale, and academia, as a base for its operations to promote science and technology education.

The consortium provides technical, undergraduate and graduate training.

Although the gallery is separate from the AERO Institute, it is expected that the two would work collaboratively on programs.

The other two courtrooms were leased out to the Social Security Administration's Office of Hearings and Appeals. The jury assembly room and a court clerk room, which will be used as a computer room, were not included in the Social Security Administration's lease.

The Social Security Administration has decided it needs only one of the courtrooms, and the other will go toward an expansion of the AERO Institute, said Assistant City Manager Steve Williams.

Jim Skeen, [phone]

james.skeen(at)dailynews.com

CAPTION(S):

3 photos

Photo:

(1 -- 2 -- color) Alan Brown of NASA Dryden Flight Research Center's public affairs, above, shows drawings the new Aerospace Exploration Gallery at the Palmdale Civic Center. Below, an SR-71 spy plane's exhaust nozzle is used as a TV stand.

(3) The front nose of an A-4 Skyhawk jet is one of many items at the Aerospace Exploration Gallery, to finish in April.

Gene Blevins/Special to the Daily News