The Historic Rocket Engine Test Facility (RETF)
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A Brief Description of This Mitigation Project

The RETF was listed as a National Historic Landmark in 1985 as part of NASA’s “Man in Space” theme to help preserve the history of the efforts involved in sending a human into space. As a National Historic Landmark, the RETF was afforded the highest protections from potentially damaging federal actions, such as demolition. Because the City of Cleveland needed to acquire and to demolish the RETF in order to construct a new airport runway, they were required to mitigate by recording the history of the RETF. To mitigate this demolition, the following items help tell the story of the RETF:

• Level I Historic American Engineering Record (HAER) documentation of the buildings
• Videotaped interviews of retired RETF engineers
• Comprehensive history book on the RETF story
• Web-based presentation about the RETF
• Two videos covering the history of the RETF
• Restoration of an existing three-dimensional scale model of the RETF
• Archiving of RETF files and offering of RETF artifacts to museums
• Construction of a museum-quality display

Credits:

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), The Ohio State Historic Preservation Office (OSHPO), and the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (ACHP) established the scope of the recording project and monitored its production. The City of Cleveland and the Program Management Team guided the development of this recording project. Middough Consulting Inc, of Cleveland, Ohio served as the Project Manager. Hardlines Design Company of Columbus, Ohio, was subcontracted by Middough Consulting to oversee the production of all aspects of this documentation. Hardlines Design Company completed the HAER drawings and reports, molded content materials for this Web site, the videos, and the museum display. Historical Technologies of West Suffield, Connecticut, provided technical assistance and wrote the historical texts for the HAER documentation. The peer-reviewed history was written by Dr. Virginia Dawson of History Enterprises, Cleveland, Ohio. The museum display and restoration of the scale model was completed by Lucarelli Designs & Displays, Inc. of Brunswick, Ohio. The retiree videos and five- and twenty-minute videos were produced by NASA Glenn Research Center’s Imaging Technology Center. Finally, this Web site was created by sitebyMike of Elgin, Illinois.

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