50 Fun Facts About National Air and Space Museum

Which TV series' 11-foot starship filming model is displayed in the National Air and Space Museum?

Star Trek's original USS Enterprise model reached the Smithsonian in 1974, dirty and packed in three crates. Paramount had donated it after the series ended.

Charles Lindbergh's Spirit of St. Louis, now in the National Air and Space Museum, ended its 1927 solo flight where?

Paris came into view after 33 and a half hours alone in the air. The following year Lindbergh flew the plane to Washington himself and presented it to the Smithsonian.

Which Star Wars droid did model makers hide on the Close Encounters mothership at the Udvar-Hazy Center?

R2-D2 was fixed to the underside as an in-joke by Dennis Muren, who had just finished work on Star Wars. He also tucked in a pea-sized TIE fighter.

Whose Moon spacesuit did the National Air and Space Museum conserve using $719,779 raised on Kickstarter?

Neil Armstrong's suit was the star of the Moon landing's 50th anniversary in 2019, when the museum also placed 15 replicas of it in Major League Baseball stadiums.

Which aviator's red Lockheed Vega, flown solo across the Atlantic in 1932, is in the National Air and Space Museum?

Amelia Earhart fought ice and engine trouble for almost 15 hours, then set the Vega down in a pasture in Northern Ireland. She was the first woman to make the crossing alone.

For the Moon landing's 50th anniversary, the National Air and Space Museum projected a show onto which landmark?

The Washington Monument became the screen for Apollo 50: Go for the Moon, and more than 500,000 people came out to watch the story of the landing play across it.

Which astronaut became the first American to orbit Earth in Friendship 7, now a National Air and Space Museum treasure?

John Glenn chose the capsule's name with his wife and children, who went through dictionaries and a thesaurus for ideas. He circled Earth three times in 1962.

The 1903 Wright Flyer, star of the National Air and Space Museum, made its first flights near which town?

Kitty Hawk lay four miles north of the dunes where the brothers flew. The plane left the ground only four times, all on one December day, before a gust wrecked it.

Which actor plays the guard who stops rockets launching inside the National Air and Space Museum in a 2009 comedy?

Ben Stiller returned as night guard Larry Daley in Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian. Mindy Kaling has a small part as one of the museum's docents.

The Apollo 11 crew's Mobile Quarantine Facility, now at the Udvar-Hazy Center, was converted from what?

An Airstream trailer kept the crew sealed in aboard the carrier USS Hornet and then in the hold of a cargo plane to Houston. President Nixon welcomed them home while they were still shut inside.

What is the name of the Apollo 11 command module, long a centrepiece of the National Air and Space Museum?

Columbia was the only part of the Apollo 11 spacecraft to return to Earth. A 3D scan in 2016 revealed notes the astronauts had written on its inside walls.

Which pilot broke the sound barrier in the orange Bell X-1 that hangs in the National Air and Space Museum?

Chuck Yeager named the rocket plane Glamorous Glennis after his wife. It never took off by itself for the record flight: a B-29 carried it up and dropped it from the bomb bay.

Which bomber's planned 1995 exhibit at the National Air and Space Museum caused a row that cost the director his job?

Enola Gay's exhibit script angered veterans' groups, and 81 members of Congress called for director Martin Harwit to go. The cut-down display still drew nearly four million visitors.

Which Space Shuttle orbiter, veteran of 39 missions, was delivered to the Udvar-Hazy Center in 2012?

Discovery flew more often than any other Space Shuttle, then made its last trip on the back of a modified jumbo jet. It took the place of a test orbiter that had never been to space.

Which spy plane flew from Los Angeles to Washington in 64 minutes on its 1990 delivery flight to the Smithsonian?

The SR-71 Blackbird averaged more than 2,100 miles per hour and set four speed records on the trip, a showy send-off for a plane the Air Force was retiring.

Which supersonic airliner, once flown by Air France, is preserved in the main hangar of the Udvar-Hazy Center?

Concorde could cross the Atlantic cruising at twice the speed of sound for three-quarters of the way. A British Airways sister ship is preserved in Seattle.

The Udvar-Hazy Center, the National Air and Space Museum's hangar annex, sits beside the runways of which airport?

Dulles International is joined to the annex by a private taxiway, so some aircraft have simply landed and rolled straight into the collection.

Steven F. Udvar-Hazy, whose $65 million gift built the National Air and Space Museum's annex, emigrated from where?

Hungary is where the future billionaire was born. He made his money by co-founding International Lease Finance Corporation, which buys airliners and rents them out to airlines.

Which astronaut who flew to the Moon ran the National Air and Space Museum when its Mall building opened in 1976?

Michael Collins became director in 1971 and steered the building through construction. Two years earlier he had circled alone in orbit while his two crewmates walked on the surface.

At the National Air and Space Museum's 1976 opening, a signal from which Mars-bound spacecraft cut the ribbon?

Viking 1 was closing in on the planet when its signal moved a mechanical arm that split the ribbon. Less than three weeks later its lander touched down safely on the surface.

The touchable Moon rock at the National Air and Space Museum was inspired by a scientist's pilgrimage to which city?

Mecca is where Farouk El-Baz touched the Black Stone as a boy. The Apollo scientist later suggested that museum visitors should be able to lay a finger on a piece of the Moon.

Which president signed the 1946 act creating the National Air Museum, forerunner of the Air and Space Museum?

Harry S. Truman signed the law in August 1946. With no building of its own, the new museum showed planes in a metal hut nicknamed the Tin Shed and lined its rockets up outdoors.

Which president called the National Air and Space Museum a birthday present to America at its Bicentennial opening?

Gerald Ford opened the doors three days before the nation's 200th birthday, which made the new museum one of the highlights of the Bicentennial summer.

The National Air and Space Museum's collection began in 1876 with a Chinese gift of twenty what?

Kites from the Chinese Imperial Commission stayed behind after Philadelphia's Centennial Exposition, once a Smithsonian official persuaded exhibitors that shipping their displays home would cost too much.

Which architect of the firm HOK designed the National Air and Space Museum as four marble cubes linked by glass halls?

Gyo Obata kept the building low and plain so that it would not compete with the Capitol nearby. Its west glass wall doubles as a giant door for bringing aircraft inside.

The National Air and Space Museum stands where Armory Square Hospital treated badly wounded soldiers of which war?

Civil War casualties reached it from the battlefields in the worst condition of any sent to Washington. Temporary government buildings then covered the area until the 1960s.

Which spacecraft in the National Air and Space Museum made the first privately funded crewed spaceflight in 2004?

SpaceShipOne won the $10 million Ansari X Prize that year and was retired at once. It had first gone supersonic on the 100th anniversary of the Wright brothers' first powered flight.

Which aircraft in the National Air and Space Museum first circled the globe without stopping or refuelling, in 1986?

Rutan Voyager stayed up for nine days. Its fuel-heavy wingtips scraped along the runway on takeoff and both winglets broke off before the trip had properly begun.

Which wealthy aviator set a 1935 landplane speed record in the silver H-1 Racer at the National Air and Space Museum?

Howard Hughes clocked 352 miles per hour, ran the tanks dry and crash-landed in a beet field without serious harm. The racer was donated to the Smithsonian in 1975.

The Smithsonian's Spirit of St. Louis has no front windscreen, so what let its pilot see ahead?

A periscope was fitted because the main fuel tanks sat in front of the cockpit, where a windscreen would be. Mostly, though, Lindbergh turned the plane slightly and looked out of the side.

Before the Smithsonian got the Wright Flyer in 1948, a feud kept it on show for two decades in which foreign capital?

London's Science Museum received the plane in 1928 because Orville Wright was angry that the Smithsonian would not call it the first true airplane. It came home after the Smithsonian backed down.

Orville Wright's feud with the Smithsonian began when it backed which former secretary's failed Aerodrome?

Samuel Langley's machine dropped into the Potomac River on launch in 1903, weeks before the Wrights flew. The Smithsonian later had it heavily modified and flown to vindicate him.

Which rocket pioneer did the Smithsonian back with a $5,000 grant in 1917, long before it had an Air and Space Museum?

Robert Goddard went on to launch the world's first liquid-fuelled rocket in 1926, from his Aunt Effie's farm in Massachusetts. The Smithsonian also published his landmark paper on reaching extreme altitudes.

The Dash 80 at the Udvar-Hazy Center, a prototype barrel-rolled over a Seattle boat race in 1955, led to which airliner?

The Boeing 707 grew out of it, as did the KC-135 tanker. Test pilot Tex Johnston, summoned by the company president over the stunt, answered that he was only selling airplanes.

To Fly!, a film made for the National Air and Space Museum's 1976 opening, popularised which giant-screen format?

IMAX theatres were built around the world on the back of the film's success, and it was later added to the National Film Registry.

Whose $200 million gift to the Smithsonian in 2021 pays for a new learning center at the National Air and Space Museum?

Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon and the rocket company Blue Origin, made the largest gift the Smithsonian had received since James Smithson's founding bequest.

The National Air and Space Museum holds the flawless backup main mirror made for which space telescope?

Hubble went into orbit with a main mirror ground to the wrong shape, which blurred its early pictures. The spare that stayed on Earth had been made correctly all along.

The National Air and Space Museum let visitors walk through the living quarters of the backup of which space station?

Skylab's twin was built as a spare, and NASA weighed launching it as a second station before the money ran out. It went on show at the museum in 1976 instead.

Which one-eyed pilot flew the Smithsonian's Winnie Mae on the first solo flight around the world?

Wiley Post lost the eye in an oil-rig accident and spent the settlement money on his first plane. For the 1933 solo trip he fitted the Winnie Mae with an early autopilot.

The Aichi Seiran at the Udvar-Hazy Center, the only one left, was a wartime Japanese bomber built to launch from what?

Submarines were meant to carry the floatplanes across the ocean for surprise raids on targets such as the Panama Canal. Japan surrendered before the first mission was flown.

The Vin Fiz, the Wright plane in the National Air and Space Museum that first crossed America, was named after what?

A grape soda sold by the Armour meatpacking company sponsored the 1911 flight, which took Cal Rodgers almost three months. A train followed with a mechanic, his wife and his mother.

Able, who survived a 1959 rocket flight and is preserved at the National Air and Space Museum, was what kind of animal?

A rhesus monkey, Able rode a Jupiter rocket with a squirrel monkey called Baker, and both came back alive. Able died days later during surgery to remove an electrode.

Which light plane that taught countless pilots to fly was the first object moved into the Udvar-Hazy Center in 2003?

The Piper J-3 Cub went in on March 7, 2003, nine months before the doors opened. The hangar is the only Smithsonian museum building paid for entirely with private money.

Which city names the Douglas World Cruiser at the Smithsonian that led the first flight around the world in 1924?

Chicago took over the lead after the flagship Seattle crashed in Alaska. Four Army planes set out that April, and the trip home took them nearly six months.

The Smithsonian's Gossamer Condor won the 1977 Kremer Prize as the first practical aircraft powered by what?

Human muscle did the work: amateur cyclist Bryan Allen pedalled it around a one-mile figure-eight course, claiming a prize, by then worth £50,000, that had gone unwon for 18 years.

Which astronaut made the first American spacewalk from Gemini 4, a capsule kept in the National Air and Space Museum?

Ed White floated outside for about 23 minutes, steering with a gas gun, and stayed out almost ten minutes longer than planned. He called coming back in the saddest moment of his life.

Which balloon, whose gondola is kept at the Udvar-Hazy Center, made the first Atlantic crossing by balloon in 1978?

Double Eagle II flew three men from Maine to France in 137 hours. Souvenir hunters at the landing stole most of the logs and charts, though the gondola itself was protected.

Which film franchise brought giant robots to the Udvar-Hazy Center for its 2009 sequel, the hangar's first screen role?

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen was shot among the real aircraft, and the center stayed open to visitors during filming with only certain areas closed off.

Which fast-food chain served burgers inside the National Air and Space Museum's glass food court from 2002?

McDonald's shared the glass pavilion with Boston Market and a pizza counter. The pavilion closed in 2017 and was later demolished to make room for a three-storey education building.

The Udvar-Hazy Center, opened in 2003 to hold aircraft too big for the National Mall building, is in which state?

Virginia gained the hangar at Chantilly, and more than 200,000 people came in its first two weeks. It soon became the most-visited museum in the state.