McAuliffe-Shepard Discovery Center

For those interested in the military dimensions of aerospace history, the McAuliffe-Shepard Discovery Center in Concord ties New Hampshire’s local story to the broader arc of Cold War and postwar defense technology. Dedicated to Christa McAuliffe and Alan Shepard, the center anchors two distinct yet related narratives: the civilianization of spaceflight and the military test-pilot culture that helped create it. Shepard, a Navy test pilot before becoming the first American in space and later a moonwalker, represents the close interweaving of naval aviation, rocketry, and early human spaceflight. Outside, the full-sized replica of a Mercury-Redstone rocket and the 1:1 Mercury capsule model provide a tangible sense of the engineering scale behind the first U.S. manned launches, a program rooted in ballistic missile development. The on-loan 1956 Vought XF8U-2 jet from the National Naval Aviation Museum further situates the site within the evolution of high-performance carrier aviation during the jet age. Taken together, the artifacts and context offer a compact study in how military research, test flying, and strategic imperatives shaped the technologies that later defined human space exploration.