Past and Future of Spaceflight at the Museum of Flight

Last weekend was a celebration of space at the Museum of Flight in Seattle. A Yuri's Night party and SpaceUp Seattle provided for both a celebration of the beginning of manned spaceflight 52 years ago and some contemplation about the future through part what's being done today, part what could be done.

Wings of Heroes Gala - Space Reunion at the Museum of Flight

When I moved to Seattle now almost two years ago with my family to try my luck at Jeff Bezos's bigger of his two companies (not Blue Origin), little did I know that one of the opportunities that to open up would be to share a tent (one fit for tuxedos and evening dresses) and dinner with five decades of space icons flown-in from across the United States and beyond to a museum less than twenty miles from my home. All that and more took place at the the Wings of Heroes Gala on September 22 2012 at the Museum of Flight in Seattle.

Cheering Human Curiosity on Mars

Human curiosity is now on Mars. While no human is in the flesh on the red planet, a car-sized 6-wheeled rover of human creation landed on Mars on August 5th. The humans who sent it there knew it landed at 10:31pm Pacific time, which was about 14 minutes after it actually did. I was one of the about 600 people who came that evening to the Museum of Flight in Boeing Field, Seattle WA, to congregate with fellow space enthusiasts, hear about the landing challenges from people who made it possible and share the excitement and anticipation of the unfolding crazy-complex landing full of firsts.

Surprises at an Airplane Museum

Pueblo Weisbrod Aircraft Museum

Pueblo is a town in Colorado of a little over 100,000 people, incorporated 135 years ago. It was one of our stops on a recent road trip to Taos, New Mexico. We went to the Weisbrod Aircraft Museum based on a flier at the hotel, not knowing exactly what's there. Apart from airplanes, the museum held a few space related surprises for us.

We arrived and were greeted by two veteran pilots, one of which took us on a private tour. It was great to get a tour from a person who actually flew many of the types of planes on display rather than the usual tour guide, hired, trained and synthetic. The museum is placed in a small airport which used to be a central U.S. Air-Force base in Word War II. He told us about each plane and about other artifacts on display - various American uniforms, Russian uniforms and even a huge Nazi flag in pristine condition captured in 1945, which as a Jewish person who had parents that were lucky enough to survive made me clench.

Peachy nose-art

B-29 at the Pueblo Aircraft Museum

At the center of the exhibit hall is the "Peachy" B-29, the same kind of airplane which dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It is an impressive four-engine airplane from the time airplane nose-art was common, with anything from cartoons to nudity, as immortalized in this web site, created specifically for that purpose.

One of the surprises was in the form of NASA rockets in a nice cabinet. The reason it's there is for a rocket building club hosted at the museum. I think the connection and continuity between old aircrafts, some dating back to the beginning of the twentieth century, to rocketry and space, is important, as for some reason, many realize the global scale changes airplanes have made in our daily lives, but still don't fully grasp how much space technologies improve our lives now and will continue to do so in the future.

Plaque

Gene Rodenberry's uniform

The biggest space related surprise was the U.S. Army Air Force uniform as worn by Captain Eugene Wesley Rodenberry, known to anyone with an ounce of space enthusiasm in them as Gene Rodenberry, the creator of Star Trek.

Mr. Rodenberry visited the museum himself and donated the uniform, which is now on display as a memorial.

We enjoyed visiting the museum and recommend it to anyone passing through Colorado, if only to get a glimpse of aviation history, be reminded of the low points of the human race in the last century as well as the victories enabling and protecting our future.

Journey to the Stars

I've been having discussions this past week about humanity, the meaning of our existence here, religion and in between. I found myself pulling up the following video, created by the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH). Watching it humbling. It shows both how far we've come in terms of knowledge about the universe and at the same time how little that portion is from all there is to discover and explore.



The AMNH has a lot more to offer in terms of science and space combined with art. If you're in New York, you'll want to go there and check out the unabridged version of The Known Universe, a 60 minute presentation of which the YouTube video is only a small portion.

Another interesting program is Journey to the Stars, a spectacular (quoting the web site) space show in the museum that combines real photos, artist rendering and visualizations of physics simulations. Below is the trailer of that show.



I haven't been in New York with my family, but I know I'll go visit the American Museum of Natural History when I'm there. This is the right stuff to entice a new generation of space explorers that will boldly go where no one has gone before.