NASA ARC Internal Memo: Airship Dedication and Moffett 75th Anniversary

Subject: Message from the Center Director,
November 21, 2008 – Airship Dedication and Moffett 75th Anniversary
From: Centerwide Announcement Date: Thursday, November 13, 2008

Message from the Center Director November 21, 2008 – Airship Dedication and Moffett 75th Anniversary

In 1933, the United States Navy commissioned Naval Air Station Moffett Field (then known as NAS Sunnyvale) as the West Coast home of the Nation’s lighter-than-air aviation program. Seventy-five years later, the era of the airship is reborn. Since October 25, 2008, our NASA partner, Airship Ventures, has been operating from Hangar Two at Moffett Field.

NASA Ames Research Center and Airship Ventures would like to invite you to a celebration of the return of the airships and Moffett Field’s 75th anniversary on Friday, November 21, 2008. We will join with Airship Ventures to dedicate the naming of their new Zeppelin NT airship, which is based at Moffett Field. Colonel William Moffett III, the grandson of Admiral Moffett, will participate in the ceremony.

The ceremony will be from 11 a.m. – 11:45 a.m., at the Moffett Field Flight Operations Building (Building 158), with the airship arriving at 10 a.m. I encourage Ames employees to consider walking or biking to Building 158.

We will have vintage cars on display and live music from the Jazz Age. Members of the Bay Area Art Deco Society will arrive in Model A’s and high fashion from the 1930s. Feel free to arrive in clothing representative of your favorite decade of Moffett’s existence: perhaps a 1940s zoot suit, poodle skirts from the 50s, or hippie beads straight out of the Haight-Ashbury.

I hope all members of the Ames community can join us at this festive occasion to welcome back the Airship to California and celebrate Moffett Field’s rich history and renewed future.

S. Pete Worden Center Director