Air Force tracking station dome faces deadline to move

Bob Nolan opens the door of the Radome tracking station he is reassembling behind BCFR Station 64 in Melbourne Beach, Fla.(Photo: Rik Jesse, Florida Today)MELBOURNE BEACH, Fla. — An Air Force telescopic tracking station off State Road A1A helped engineers monitor ascending rockets during the Mercury, Gemini, Apollo and shuttle eras, and its domed roof served as a roadside landmark for decades.Crews dismantled the salt-spray-corroded facility seven years ago. Today, segments of the disassembled dome still lay in the grass across the highway alongside oleander and scrub, lashed down with a white rope.Not for long: Melbourne Beach officials have set a Jan. 31 deadline for the owner, Bob Nolan, 84, to move the Space Race relic elsewhere. Nolan and others fear the 1,100-pound curved contraption will get sold as scrap metal or trucked to the dump."We don't want it destroyed. We don't want a negative to happen," said Nolan, a retired Air Force captain who has championed the dome-preservation campaign."My goal is, because this is such an important piece of history, that we preserve this for future generations. In my view, 99 percent of the people in the United States have never seen anything that has anything to do with NASA, except on TV," Nolan said.Dome pieces and associated hardware sit idle a stone's throw from the Melbourne Beach Old Town Hall History Center. Brevard County owns this property just south of the Flutie Athletic Complex. The town leases the museum site.Grassroots plans to put the locally nicknamed "Radome" on public display have never come to fruition since a crane lowered it to the ground from its three-story perch in January 2008.Nolan, county and town officials have spent years discussing Radome reconstruction and maintenance costs, hurricane liability risks, pouring an 18-by-18-foot concrete pad, launching a "Friends of the Tracking Dome" fundraising organization, engineering studies, permitting and zoning matters.On Dec. 17, the Melbourne Beach Town Commission voted 4-1 to discontinue any efforts on the dome project. Mayor Jim Simmons, who worked in the space program for 33 years, cast the dissenting vote.Then last week, Town Manager Jamie Titcomb issued Nolan the dome-removal deadline.After Jan. 31, Melbourne Beach code enforcement officials will relocate the dome to an undetermined location, Titcomb said.Nolan, who took ownership of the dome in December 2012, responded by dropping off a letter at Town Hall claiming that the town would owe him $37,343 if the dome is destroyed.Bob NolanChuck Least, a New York snowbird who is helping Nolan with the dome restoration project, and Crystal Cain, a Melbourne Beach History Center Board member, hope a "caretaker organization" hears of the Radome's plight and reassembles the semicircular structure elsewhere to educate the public.The Melbourne Beach tracking station was part of the Eastern Range communications network, managed by the 45th Space Wing at Patrick Air Force Base.Inside the dome, a Recording Optical Tracking Instrument — a telescope with a 24-inch aperture that took high-resolution photos of objects in space — operated in tandem with optical systems at PAFB, Cocoa Beach and Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.The telescope itself is now displayed at the Air Force Space & Missile Museum at the Air Force station.The original dome was likely installed between 1950 and 1955, Cain said. The Radome was a replacement that was used throughout the shuttle era.Demolition workers cut the dome into eight slices while razing the tracking station. Nowadays, Cain said startled history center visitors have spotted rattlesnakes amid these stacked segments.According to Town Hall documents, the assembled Radome measures 16 feet in diameter and stands 10 feet, 8 inches high. Each aluminum slice is coated with a fiberglass exterior shell and weighs 125 to 130 pounds."If it's not out of here by the 31st, it's going to go into the landfill. That would be, historically, a terrible thing to have happen," Least said.Rick Neale also reports for Florida Today.Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah dead at 90Jan 23, 2015