Airport director sends ‘Flying Boxcar’ pin into orbit

By
Julie McClure
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Columbus Municipal Airport Director Brian Payne displays a certificate of authenticity showing that his business card and C-119 pin orbited the Earth on the International Space Station at his airport office in Columbus, Ind., Monday, April 26, 2021. His pin and business card were taken into orbit by Astronaut Chris Cassidy. A friend of his whose aunt is married to Cassidy arranged for the items to be taken into orbit. Mike Wolanin | The Republic||Date: 10-25-19

COLUMBUS, Ind. — If you could send something to space, what would you choose?

For some, the answer might be a great work of art, something worth sharing with the universe. For others, it might be a message in a bottle, so to speak, written in the hopes of one day reaching someone in another galaxy. For others, it might be as simple as an American flag.

For Columbus Municipal Airport Director Brian Payne, the answer was a C-119 lapel pin attached to his business card.

Payne
Payne

“I was looking for something that was meaningful to me and meaningful to the community,” he said.

Just over a year ago, Expedition 63 Flight Commander Chris Cassidy and other crew members launched aboard Soyuz MS-16 to the International Space Station. The team flew in space for 196 days and orbited the Earth 3,136 times.

Date: 10-25-19 Location: 10-25-19 Subject: Expedition 63 (62S) crew members Chris Cassidy and Nikolai Tikhonov in topside suitup at NBL in preparation for ISS EVA Maintence 6 training. Photographer: James Blair
Date: 10-25-19
Location: 10-25-19
Subject: Expedition 63 (62S) crew members Chris Cassidy and Nikolai Tikhonov in topside suitup at NBL in preparation for ISS EVA Maintence 6 training.
Photographer: James Blair

Before he left, Cassidy’s wife asked her family if there was anything they wanted to send with him to the International Space Station. Her niece, Rachel Yancer of Edinburgh, decided to send her business card and also reached out to Payne about the opportunity.

“Brian is a good friend of mine, and we’re in Rotary together,” Yancer explained. “And I said, ‘I know that you love space. Would you like to send something up?’”

Yancer said that items sent to the space station had to be small and light, and there were also other parameters, similar to how certain items are banned on airplanes.

Payne said he wanted to find a way to represent Columbus and settled on his C-119 lapel pin. C-119 “Flying Boxcars” are significant to Columbus, most prominently seen in the efforts of Atterbury-Bakalar Air Museum volunteers to re-assemble a restored C-119 for display at the airport.

“It’s just such a cool project that I think is going to last for decades and have an impact on people’s lives for decades,” Payne said.

For more on this story, see Wednesday’s Republic.

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