The National Air and Space Museum’s massive Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia, displays 161 aircraft and 160 large space and missile artifacts that are too big for the National Mall location, plus thousands of intriguing smaller items. The center includes the ten-story-high Boeing Aviation Hangar, the 80-foot-high James S. McDonnell Space Hangar, immersive flight simulators, the Airbus IMAX Theater and the Donald D. Engen Observation Tower, which offers views of the Washington Dulles International Airport runways. The aircraft and spacecraft are displayed in huge open hangars on the main floor, where visitors can walk among them, and on two levels suspended from the ceiling. A series of skywalks brings visitors nose-to-nose with the suspended vehicles, hung to replicate their flight maneuvers

The Boeing Aviation Hangar

The hangar is laid out with military aviation on the north and civil aviation on the south. It is organized around ten themes:

• Business Aviation
• General Aviation
• Commercial Aviation
• Sport Aviation
• World War II Aviation
• Korean Conflict and Vietnam War Aircraft
• Cold War Aviation
• Modern Military Aviation
• Pre-1920 Aviation
• Vertical Flight

 

Highlights

The fastest jet ever built, the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird, looms beneath the entrance overhang. The Boeing B-29 Superfortress Enola Gay is fully restored and reassembled for the first time in more than 40 years. Don’t miss a close-up view of its cockpit from the center walkway.

Check out the Lockheed L-1049 Super Constellation, commonly known as the Connie. Introduced in 1951, the Connie shortened transcontinental travel by an astounding five hours.

On the civil aviation side, the graceful 202-foot-long Air France Concorde dominates the aircraft around it. From the center skywalk, see the Pitts Special Little Stinker. Only 15.5 feet long, it was flown by renowned aerobatic pilot Betty Skelton in the late 1940s and early ’50s.

“Lucky Lindy” memorabilia, a colorful assortment of commemorative items, illustrate the cultural phenomenon that followed Charles Lindbergh’s famous 1927 flight.

Flight Simulators

Control the action! Try your hand at aerial combat. Seating for two, $8 per person. Or choose an adventure aboard a ride simulator and experience aviation ride films such as “Space Walk 3D,” “Cosmic Coaster,” “F-18 Experience,” or “Wings.” Seating for up to 20, $7 per person.

The James S. McDonnell Space Hangar

The space hangar is organized around four themes: rocketry and missiles, human space flight, application satellites and space science.

Highlights

The massive space shuttle Enterprise, NASA’s 1981 test vehicle, is the centerpiece of the hangar. Floating above is a space-walking astronaut wearing a manned maneuvering unit, a backpack propulsion device that gave astronauts untethered mobility outside the space shuttle.

A popular item from Hollywood science fiction is the model of an alien spacecraft used in the Steven Spielberg film, “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.” Try to find the hidden items added by the model-makers as an inside joke. They are a Volkswagen bus, a submarine and the R2-D2 android from “Star Wars.”

Looking for really big stuff? Check out the 69-foot, floor-to-ceiling Redstone missile; the instrument ring segment—22 feet in diameter—of a Saturn V rocket that was never built; and the huge space shuttle main engine.

From one extreme to the other, don’t miss the small stuff: aerial cameras, aircraft artillery, pilot uniforms, and aviation and space memorabilia. Among the tiniest and most unusual is Anita, a spider used in 1973 for web formation experiments aboard Skylab.

Become a member of the National Air and Space Society.