Imaginations soar inside Space Museum

WASHINGTON -- Kids of all ages are fascinated with flight. We marvel at men landing on the Moon and exploring space. We imagine what it would be like to fly around the world in a hot-air balloon. We are amazed that two brothers built the first airplane out of spruce and ash and covered the frame with muslin. And we are dazzled with the skill of pilots who can land a jet on an aircraft carrier.

Thankfully, there is a place where we can experience all of the above, plus much more. The National Air and Space Museum, one of the Smithsonian Museums in Washington, D.C., offers 23 galleries packed with hundreds of exhibits "depicting everything from the first balloon flight to current space endeavors" to make our imaginations soar.

In April 2003, I visited the National Air and Space Museum with my wife, Susan, and our 11-year-old son, Marco. The fun and learning experiences were nonstop. Here are a few of the highlights from our visit, highlights that are a "must see" on most visitors' lists.

Things that fly

Suspended from the ceiling of the football-field-sized, two-story building are the Spirit of St. Louis, the plane Charles Lindbergh flew from New York to Paris in 1927; the Wright Brother's 1903 Wright Flyer; a Douglas DC-3; the Voyager, a lightweight aircraft that flew around the world without refueling in 1986; the X-15, the first winged aircraft to achieve Mach 4; and the Bell X-1, the rocket-powered airplane that Chuck Yeager flew faster than the speed of sound in 1947.

My son was especially interested in the spacecraft on display. They gave him, and us, an up-close-and-personal look at the marvels of ingenuity that have taken man into space. His favorites were the Apollo 11 command module Columbia, which went to the moon and back in 1969; the Mercury Friendship 7, which put the first American, John Glen, Jr., in orbit; the Mariner 2, which, in 1962, passed within 26,500 miles of Venus; and the Gemini IV, the spacecraft used for America's first space walk in 1965.

Interactive exhibits

The dozens of hands-on, interactive exhibits at the museum are both educational and entertaining. One of the most popular is At the Controls. Here you can climb aboard a MaxFlight FS2000 simulator and fly through a 360-degree barrel roll, or do an upside-down loop. You can also experience what it was like to be a barnstormer or a "Top Gun" during a 5-minute adventure. Many of the simulation programs allow you to "fly" aircraft on display, including the Spirit of St. Louis and the Mitsubishi Zero.

Want to know what it's like to land on an aircraft carrier in a combat jet during the light of day or in the darkness of night? You can do that, too, during your visit. Great fun.

In the How Things Fly gallery you'll find more than 50 interactive exhibits that teach the principles of flight: lift, drag, weight and thrust.

My son was interested to learn that air is actually heavy at sea level, a cubic yard weighing two pounds. He was also interested to learn that a 100-pound person would weigh only 17 pounds on the Moon, and 250 pounds on Saturn.

Three breathtaking movies are currently being shown on the five-story-high IMAX screen: Space Station 3-D, film shot by astronauts that shows the partnership between 16 nations building a laboratory in outer space; To Fly!, which begins with a ride in an 1800s balloon and ends with a blastoff into space on a Saturn rocket, and Straight Up!, a film that shows how helicopters are used to carry out sea and mountain rescues, apprehend drug smugglers, and save endangered animals.

The IMAX films are so realistic that some folks get motion sickness when viewing them. If that happens, close your eyes and the sensation will quickly pass.

Einstein Planetarium

While I was photographing the airplanes and spaceships, my wife and son took in the Infinity Express show at the Einstein Planetarium, which simulates a voyage through the solar system, past the Milky Way, to the very edge of the known universe and back. "Way-cool," is how my son described the "journey."

We explored several of the realistic themed galleries throughout the museum. As we currently have a nephew serving in the Navy, we found the Sea-Air Operations gallery, complete with a fighter with folding wings, very interesting. Marco was fascinated with the space suits on display in the Rocketry and Space flight gallery.

We all were fascinated in the Looking at Earth gallery, which gives illustrations of how aerial photography and satellite imaging help with environmental monitoring and with understanding geology and archaeology. As a photographer, I was impressed with the quality of the pictures, some taken from balloons, others from space.

Midway through our visit we grabbed lunch at the Wright Place Food Court, named after the Wright Brothers.