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BOZEMAN- The Museum of the Rockies showed off the soon to be fully updated Taylor Planetarium earlier this week.

Visitors saw a big empty room, and one that was stripped to the walls at that. But no one's panicking, and in fact the museum is proud of this first step toward a brave new future.

"We will open it to the public, God willing, on March second, Saturday, March 2nd," museum director Shelly McKamey said.

"They built everything in about two weeks. Next week we start doing the painting. The week after that they start covering up the walls so everything will be built black," planetarium program manager Eric Loberg explained.

"The kinds of things we'll be able to show the public are the latest stuff from the NASA missions," added former space shuttle astronaut Loren Acton added.

"We'll have the 117 seats instead of the 102," McKamey said.

"I'm going to set these up and this is going to be on an iPad so we can walk around and the kids can ask us how do we see the moon, how do we see the phases?," Loberg told us.

"We have set up a sample chair. It's a different kind of chair, it's more V-shaped so it's easier to see around the chairs in front of you," McKamey added.

"You know we got to the place where it was either close it or upgrade it, and I'm so glad the decision was made to upgrade it," Acton said.

The museum is still raising money to pay for the planetarium upgrade. The old system was so outdated, parts were no longer available to repair it.