Dream Tullahoma Envisions Aerospace Museum For City

In its continuing effort to brand Tullahoma as Tennessee's aerospace city, Dream Tullahoma is joining forces with the Hands-on Science Center to create an aerospace museum.
The organizations hope to build a 5,000 sq. ft. structure to house aerospace artifacts on property adjacent to HOSC.
Dream Tullahoma, a non-profit established last year, has already raised funds for several banners and plane statues, which are being placed throughout the city.
One of the statues, purchased by Jacobs Technology and donated to Dream Tullahoma , will become part of a “proposed 'Welcome to Tullahoma' sign to be erected at the corner of Jackson and Highway 55,” said Tullahoma Alderman Stanton. “We're hopeful of having the plane erected above the sign.”
The museum is another part of the aerospace-branding plan for Tullahoma.
According to Ray Knowliss, chairman of Dream Tullahoma's aerospace museum committee, “The idea is to have an aerospace test articles museum to represent experimental aircraft or actual aircraft that have evolved during the last fifty years.” [Arnold Engineering Development Center] has been the primary tester of wind tunnel articles in this region, but there are a number of other agencies who have tested articles built in this area. With the collaboration of the Hands-on Science Center and Dream Tullahoma, we hope to put together a museum for those test articles.”
“When an aerospace company builds a wind tunnel test model they take it to AEDC or some other facility for testing,” said Knowliss. “Once they have the aerodynamic data, the model is generally surplus and winds up being stored somewhere . . . its of no further use. So my idea has been to capture some of these surplus wind tunnel models from around the country and bring them here to go in the museum.”
This is not the first time there has been a push for an aerospace museum in Coffee County. Plans to showcase the accomplishments of AEDC in a 5,000 sq. ft. museum began in 1991.
In 1999, a non-profit organization, AEDC Heritage Foundation, purchased 10 acres at exit 117 of Interstate 24 from the Coffee County Industrial Board for $10,000. The foundation had hoped to break ground for a building in 2001, but the museum never materialized.