Stafford Air & Space Museum
The Stafford Air & Space Museum is located in Tom Stafford's hometown of Weatherford, Oklahoma (about an hour west of Oklahoma City), on the grounds of Weatherford's airport. The museum and airport terminal share a lobby.
I've visited Stafford twice, in 2008 and in 2016. Between my visits the museum added a number of exhibits and was in the process of receiving additional artifacts.
For a number of years, the Gemini 6 spacecraft (the first spacecraft in which Tom Stafford flew) was displayed at the Oklahoma History Center (which has virtually no other aerospace exhibits) rather than here (at Stafford's eponymous museum). This was apparently something of a sore spot with the museum, as they were apparently denied the spacecraft due to their lower attendance figures than the museum located in Oklahoma City, so I was very pleased when I heard that Gemini 6 was relocated to Stafford in July 2018.
The museum has also undergone an expansion, with construction underway as of June 2019, so I'm definitely looking forward to my next visit.
Even before receiving Gemini 6 or adding the additional 20,000 square feet, this was already a really great museum, with a number of artifacts I'd not seen elsewhere or which are uncommon, and the rocket engine exhibits are very accessible. In addition to the space artifacts I've photographed, they have a fine collection of jet fighters and replicas of several historically-important aircraft. The passageway between two if their galleries is made from a 747 engine nacelle. The staff is friendly and the museum is very photo-friendly. The museum seems deceptively small from the outside, but it has three large galleries filled with aircraft, space program, and missile artifacts, along with artifacts in the lobby and in smaller galleries. The museum also houses a large conference room and an education center.
As of now, I have not yet sorted through all of my pictures from Stafford, but some other page references this location. Thus, this is a "place holder" version right now, with only the pictures actually referenced. Come back some time later to see if I've finished up, or drop me an email to request me to prioritize the rest of these pictures.
