Planetarium to receive prisoner-built replica of doomed shuttle<br /><br />Posted 5/20/2004 6:40 PM Updated 5/20/2004 6:55 PM<br /><br /><br />By Sara Leitch, Associated Press<br />PORTLAND, Maine - Displayed among model boats, wooden furniture and<br />knickknacks at the Maine State Prison's gift shop on Thursday was a<br />one-of-a-kind item with a prized place in the window. <br /><br />The scale model of the space shuttle Challenger - six feet long and<br />nearly four feet wide - was created from wood with painstaking<br />attention to detail, down to the outline of each of the individual<br />tiles. <br /><br />The model was removed from its perch Thursday for delivery to the<br />Christa McAuliffe Planetarium in Concord, N.H, where it will be<br />displayed in the lobby. <br /><br />"I'm completely delighted," said Jeanne Gerulskis, the planetarium's<br />executive director. "You can tell people all you want about the<br />Challenger. But seeing it in three dimensions really makes it come<br />alive." <br /><br />Planetarium officials put in a request for the model after seeing a<br />smaller version of the Challenger created at the prison. <br /><br />The first Challenger model was commissioned at the behest of Ray<br />Griffin, administrator for the McAuliffe/Challenger Center at<br />Framingham State College in the town of McAuliffe's birth in<br />Massachusetts. <br /><br />McAuliffe, a New Hampshire teacher who was supposed to be the first<br />U.S. educator to travel in space, died along with six other crew<br />members when the Challenger exploded after liftoff on Jan. 28, 1986. <br /><br />Griffin got the idea for the model after passing the prison shop while<br />driving along U.S. Route 1. He stopped to take a look. <br /><br />"I wondered what they do in there. Did they sell striped shirts or<br />something? I had no idea," Griffin said. <br /><br />When he saw the handcrafted items sold at the store, he started to<br />wonder if he could place a special order. <br /><br />"I thought, 'If these men have the skills to do that kind of detail on<br />a model of a three-masted schooner, I'll bet they could create a model<br />of the Challenger,'" he said. <br /><br />The prison refused his request, saying it doesn't take special orders.<br />But it eventually relented. <br /><br />Rod Whitten, the prisoner who carved both of the models, initially<br />said he thought it was too much work. But he decided to think about it<br />over the weekend - the same weekend that the space shuttle Columbia<br />disintegrated upon re-entering the Earth's atmosphere over Texas. <br /><br />He didn't necessarily view the second shuttle tragedy as an omen. But,<br />he said, "I thought maybe I should try." <br /><br />The first model now displayed at Framingham inspired the second, which<br />was loaded into a van Thursday for the trip to New Hampshire, where it<br />will hang belly up from the ceiling of the planetarium's lobby. <br /><br />Now Whitten, who's serving a 25-year sentence for a domestic incident,<br />is planning an even bigger and better shuttle. <br /><br />This third project, already under way, will feature the shuttle along<br />with its orange fuel tank and two solid-fuel rocket boosters. It will<br />stand nearly nine feet tall and weigh 500 pounds. <br /><br />"I carve animals and things, and this is an entirely different<br />entity," Whitten said Thursday during an interview at the Maine State<br />Prison in Warren. "It's like building a model but building all of the<br />pieces before you build the model." <br /><br />http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2004-05-20-challenger-model_x.htm