National Air and Space Museum (United States)
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Categories: Museums in Washington, DC | Smithsonian Institution | National Mall | Aerospace museums | National museums
The National Air and Space Museum (NASM) of the United States' Smithsonian Institution maintains the largest collection of aircraft and spacecraft in the world. It is also a vital center for research into the history, science, and technology of aviation and space flight, as well as planetary science and terrestrial geology and geophysics.
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Museum on the Mall
Originally called the National Air Museum when it was formed on 12 August 1946, the National Air and Space Museum collection dates back to the closing of the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia when the Smithsonian received a group of kites from the Chinese Imperial Commission. In 1889, the Stringfellow engine became the first object accessioned into the collection.
The collections of the Museum were housed in the Arts and Industries Building, in a shed in the south yard known as the "Air and Space Building" and outdoors in "Rocket Row." The beginning of the conquest of space in the 1950s and 1960s helped to drive the renaming of the Museum to the National Air and Space Museum, and finally congressional passage of appropriations for the construction of the new Museum, which opened 1 July 1976.
The main exhibit hall of the museum is on the National Mall in Washington, DC, and is one of the most popular tourist destinations of the city. In addition to the rooms crowded with historic aircraft and other artifacts, there is an IMAX theater and the Albert Einstein Planetarium.
The museum's total collection numbers over 30,000 aviation-related and 9,000 space-related artifacts, and is thus larger than will fit in the main hall. Many of the aircraft are at the Garber Restoration Facility in Suitland, Maryland.
The Museum has a research department, archives, and library.
Notable Exhibits
- The original Wright Flyer that made the first controlled, powered flight in 1903
- The Spirit of St. Louis, in which Charles Lindbergh made the first solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean
- The Bell X-1, in which Chuck Yeager made the first powered supersonic level flight
- A reconstructed V-2 rocket, the first type of man-made object to reach space
- The command module of Apollo 11, the first mission to land astronauts on the moon
- One of the very few lunar rock samples accessible to the public (visitors can even touch it)
- SpaceShipOne, the world's first privately built and piloted vehicle to reach space, built by Burt Rutan.
- The original filming model of the starship USS Enterprise from the science fiction television series, Star Trek (In the lower level of the museum store).
Museum Annex
In addition, the museum has an annex, the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, located near Dulles Airport, opened on December 15, 2003. It will eventually have 200 aircraft (Small, 2003) and 135 spacecraft on display.
The Center was made possible by a US$ 65 million gift in October 1999 to the Smithsonian Institution by Steven F. Udvar-Hazy, an immigrant from Hungary and co-founder of the International Lease Finance Corporation (Small, 2003). Construction of the Center required fifteen years of preparation (Triplett, 2003).
Notable Exhibits
- The B-29 Superfortress bomber Enola Gay, the first plane from which a nuclear weapon was dropped
- The prototype for the Boeing 707 airliner, known as the Boeing 367-80 or "Dash 80"
- An SR-71 Blackbird high-altitude, high-speed stealth reconnaissance aircraft
- An Air France Concorde, the famous model of supersonic airliner
- The prototype atmospheric test only space shuttle Enterprise
Scientific Controversy
The Air and Space Museum reports all thrust levels for rocket and jet engines in mass units of kilograms rather than force units of newtons or pounds. This usage is at odds with common scientific/engineering practice presented in NASA SP 7012. The correct SI units of thrust are newtons, and the correct Imperial ('English') units are pounds. It is notable that the NASA JPL Mars Climate Orbiter spacecraft was lost September 23, 1999 specifically because of an Imperial to metric thrust conversion error.
 Interior of museum, with Gemini capsule, Soviet rockets, and Wright Flyer |
A lunar rock sample |
External links
References
- Small, L. M. (2003, December). A century's roar and buzz: Thanks to an immigrant's generosity, the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center opens to the public. In From the Secretary. Smithsonian, 34, 20.
- Triplett, W. (2003, December). Hold everything! Smithsonian, 34, 59.de:National Air and Space Museum
es:Museo Nacional del Aire y el Espacio he:מוזיאון החלל והאוויר הלאומי