With 12 days left, the Space & Rocket Center’s first crowd funding campaign has surpassed the halfway point, currently standing at $35,851.  The final days shall no doubt be fast and furious, and there’s still time for you to get in on the action!

Take me up on the $5 of the $15 offer.  As of now, an anonymous donor is matching funds, so your $10 ($15 for the keychain, $5 back from me) can turn into $30 for the Space Center!

Go donate now!

You’re of course welcome to donate more, and three new incentive levels have been created:

First, for $75, you can get the STA patch by itself.  While the $250 level previously got you the STA patch and everything from the levels below it, this will get you the patch only.

Second, for $150, you can get the “STA Perk Combo,” netting you your choice of two of the following: STA Keychain, bumper sticker, poster, T-Shirt, or mission patch.

Finally, $300 will get upgrade your STA poster with autographs from various astronauts.  Astronauts Hoot Gibson, Steven Nagel, and Jim Halsell have currently all committed to signing, and more could be added before all is said and done!  Unlike the other two new levels, this $300 level will still get you all incentives less than $300 (but only one STA poster).

And if you’re going to be in the Washington D.C. area on April 24, you should get out to the Space Camp meet-up!  And bring a friend or two!  It will be a grand ol’ time!  Check out the Facebook Event for all of the details!

The 21st annual Great Moonbuggy Race has been rechristened this year as the first annual Human Exploration Rover Challenge.

This event, jointly held by the U.S. Space & Rocket Center and NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center has seen several important new changes for this year.

While the moonbuggies previously had to fold up to fit within a 4’x4’x4′ cube, this year has seen the box extended by an extra foot in all directions, to five cubic feet.

An even larger change comes from a ban on inflatable tires.

If you can’t make it out to the Space Center, be sure to check in on the race on MSFC’s UStream channel, and/or follow their twitter feed.

The U.S. Space & Rocket Center is now halfway through their Indiegogo campaign.

Thirty days in, $28,046 has been raised thus far!

The bad news is, this is slightly off pace to meet the $70,000 goal.  The good news is, there’s still an entire month left!

If you have yet to donate, every little bit helps!

Even the $15 keychain level gets us $15 closer!  If just half-of-a-percent of Space Camp alumni went and made a $15 donation, we would have this in the bag!

With a month left to go, please go donate!

In fact, if you donate $15 or more, I will cover $5 of that!  Head on over to the Indiegogo campaign, make your pledge, and shoot me an email with your name and donation amount (so I can verify on the campaign page), and your preferred method for reimbursement (check, Paypal, Square Cash, Dwolla, etc.) and I’ll get you $5!

At $10 for the keychain, that’s really not much more than you would pay for such a thing in the gift shop.  This way, you get to be part of Space Camp’s first ever crowdfunding campaign as well, and help them get the Shuttle Training Aircraft on display!

Space Camp will launch an all new design for their websites complete with brand new content (e.g. produced promotional videos) within the next few weeks!

This move has been in the works for a while, but has become increasingly necessary since the Space Camp / Aviation Challenge websites went down several weeks ago for a period lasting several days.  Since returning online, the site itself seems to have been somewhat stripped down, and not everything is where it ought to be.

For an entertaining jaunt through the history of spacecamp.com, head on over to the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine and see their listing of old Space Camp sites.  I’ve always felt the site circa 2004 was pretty shiny!

Though it had to be moved indoors from its planned Shuttle Park location, the press conference held today at Space Camp otherwise went off without a hitch.

U.S. Space & Rocket Center CEO Deborah Barnhart, Alabama Space Science Exhibit Commission Chair Col. Roosevelt Lewis (Ret.), Space Camp Alumni Advisory Board Chair John Ramsey, and Astronaut Col. Jim Halsell (Ret.) spoke today about the effort to bring the Shuttle Training Aircraft to the Space & Rocket Center, amongst other highlights at the Center.

Dr. Barnhart asked supporters, in honor of the Center’s 44th birthday, to donate forty-four dollars to the STA Indiegogo campaign.  A new incentive was also issued today at the $44 level as well.

The event today was covered at al.com, WHNT 19, and WAFF 48.  All have different pieces of footage and interviews that are worth checking out.

The entirety of the press conference is also up on the Hab1 YouTube page in its entirety.

Robert Pearlman, editor of collectSPACE, wrote up a nice piece when the campaign started that’s worth a look as well.  Space.com even picked it up, hopefully providing even more exposure!

As of this writing, 71 contributors have donated $22,000 towards the $70,000 goal.  It should be noted that, unlike many crowd-funding campaigns, this is not an all-or-nothing campaign.  Should the Space & Rocket Center fail to raise the $70,000 they’re looking for, they will still have gotten off to a very nice start!

The campaign is only nearing the end of its second week though and has been making steady progress throughout that time.  The Rocket Center is on track to exceed the $70,000 goal if donations continue in at the current rate!

The US Space & Rocket Center turns 44 today!

To commemorate this event, and to make some important announcements regarding the Shuttle Training Aircraft Indiegogo campaign, there will be a press conference at 10am in Shuttle Park at the Space & Rocket Center today.

You’re absolutely invited to come out and support the Space Center, and there will even be birthday cake (no lie)!

Update: Due to weather, the press conference will now take place in front of Endeavour, near the UAT.

Space Camp has launched a new crowd-funding initiative!

Hosted on indiegogo, Space Camp is attempting to secure funds to bring NASA’s Shuttle Training Aircraft, a modified Gulfstream II airplane, to the U.S. Space & Rocket Center.

The USSRC has set a funding goal of $70,000, and they’re offering various incentives depending on the amount you donate.  One of the higher perks involves VIP access during the Space Camp Hall of Fame weekend in August, and even lifetime membership to the U.S. Space & Rocket Center can be yours!  But even one dollar helps get a vital training apparatus from the Space Shuttle Program to a worthy retirement home.

Head on over to the indiegogo page and have a look!