Apollo Boilerplate

This Apollo Boilerplate guards over the brick "Pathway of Honor" at the Stafford Air & Space Museum. A boilerplate is a metal mock-up of the same external weight and size as a flight production model. By using an unmanned boilerplate, the design can be evaluated without endangering human life or incurring excessive expenses on detailed models. This particular boilerplate, BP1210, was used in landing and recovery training, and to support the development of flotation devices by Department of Defense Apollo support crews.
NASA transferred this boilerplate to the Smithsonian in 1975. (Actual Artifact)