WASHINGTON, Dec. 20 (States News Service) – It is adorned with animated solar panels, huge, rotating pods that house a laboratory, a museum, a docking site for transportation vehicles, and cruises at a top speed of 2.5-miles an hour.
But Boeing’s 45,000-pound space station, made up of mostly steel beams and floral decoration, won’t ever leave the ground; the ship’s 5.5-mile mission is to roll down Colorado blvd. in Pasadena, Calif., at the head of the 111th Tournament of Roses parade.
The parade, carrying the theme "Celebrations 2000: Visions of the Future," precedes the Rose Bowl football match New Year’s Day between the Stanford University Cardinal and the University of Wisconsin-Madison Badgers.
The carnival-like procession will be, as usual, filled with flowers, music, fireworks and football. But this time the tournament’s organizers looked to space travel to capture the imagination of the estimated 425 million people around the world who will watch the event on television, and rev them up for the match.
Among floats featuring aliens and time machines, Boeing’s massive space community was a cut above the 54 other floats in the parade, said Tournament of Roses president Ken Burrows.
"[The Boeing float] really is a vision of the future, and I felt it best depicted our theme," Burrows said. "When it goes up in its full, upright position, it’s just awesome."
Boeing contracted Phoenix Decorating Co. in Pasadena to create a space community both realistic and fantastic, blaring the soundtrack to "2001: A Space Odyssey." Eight hundred and fifty Boeing employees from across the country have volunteered to decorate it.
Because Rose Bowl parade rules forbid using a commercial product in the parade, the float’s designers had to steer clear of space vehicle projects already in the works and stick to fantasy. Much of the work in recent weeks has been decorating the float with lavish, edible-sounding ornaments.
The enormous animated solar panels are adorned with silver leaf, Japanese seaweed, and cottonseeds. Below the ship is a swirling universe, populated by planets, moons and asteroids, decorated with red strawflowers, orange lentil, green split pea and spices. The base of the vehicle is covered with orchids, lilies, daisies, iris and – of course – roses.
Beth Harvey, who works on business development in Boeing’s graphics department, volunteered a Saturday recently to cut and paste dried flowers on the ship’s solar panels. "I think it’s exciting," Harvey said. "To be the first float we are pretty honored."
While it won’t enter the cosmos, navigating the float down the street requires the highest level of float technology. Thanks to hydraulic pumps operated by two massive Chevrolet engines, the craft can expand and contract its height to avoid hitting trees, bridges and phone wires. The float is 17 feet high when contracted, 45 feet high when expanded, 55 feet long, and 18 feet wide in the thinnest area, and 25 feet at the widest parts. A lone, hidden operator will sit in the nose, controlling all the operations – including the stereo system, but not the driving.
Before the parade, a panel of judges will give the floats awards for various categories, such as ‘most beautiful’.
"They’ve captured so much on it," said Carol Draper, a data tracker for Boeing who also worked on the float. "I wouldn’t be surprised if it won (an award)."
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