Even in a building devoted to feats of machinery, sometimes manpower is the way to go when maneuvering artifacts. Here, eight contractors stage a (temporarily) wingless 1928 Ford 5-AT Tri-Motor in the America by Air gallery. Affectionately called the Tin Goose, this aircraft played a key role in convincing us ground-dwellers that flying was safe.

Inside the Air and Space Museum’s $1 Billion Renovation

Nearly four years into the top-to-bottom renovation, it’s like a new museum.

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| Photographed by Jim Preston | Published on

Almost four years into a seven-year, roughly $1 billion renovation, the National Air and Space Museum will reopen eight of its 23 exhibits on October 14. With every single gallery redesigned, and more than $700 million of the total eventually put into structural upgrades, it’ll practically be a new museum, says director Chris Browne. By the time it’s finished, more diverse voices, 1,400 new objects on display, and interactive forms of storytelling (think a pinball game and an immersive “walkable” solar system) will retell the story of air and space. Yet with artifacts literally the size of jet planes, renovation is no small feat. Here’s a peek behind the scenes.

“Forty percent of the artifacts are in the museum for the first time.”

Director Chris Brown
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Curator Lauren Gottschlich cleans the engine of a 1903 Wright Flyer, which will sit at the heart of a new gallery that dives deeper into the lives of Orville and Wilbur Wright. Look closely and you can see what resembles a bicycle chain: a trace of how the brothers’ backgrounds as bicycle mechanics influenced the first airplane.
While this Lear Jet 23 fuselage, the longest-surviving and second one ever built, could reach top speeds of 561 mph in its heyday, it went much slower while cruising down I-66 on the back of a flatbed trailer. It was traveling from the Udvar-Hazy Center in Virginia, where it and many other air- and spacecraft underwent restoration, before making the trek to downtown DC.
From the second floor of the museum, the America by Air gallery looks almost like a baby’s crib mobile. Of course, hanging these planes required way more calculus. Engineers had to account for the weight of the planes, the number of hang points for each, and which trusses they were attached to, as well as the potential weight of snow on the building’s roof.
Workers prepare the Apollo 11 command module Columbia for mounting in the Destination Moon gallery. During renovation, the module was digitally archived and restored to a level not previously seen. In the process, curators discovered new details about the spacecraft when astronaut Michael Collins paid a visit and helped them decipher notes he’d scribbled on its walls more than 50 years ago.
A car? In the Air and Space Museum? It might sound strange, but this 1959 Chevy Corvette, on loan from Kentucky’s Corvette Museum, is part of an entirely new exhibit exploring America’s need for speed. This particular model was one of the first attempts to introduce sports cars to non–racetrack drivers.
This 25-pound pressurized A1-C spacesuit was worn by astronaut Frank Borman during early training sessions for the Apollo missions. Also gracing the Destination Moon gallery is Neil Armstrong’s moonwalking suit, from which he uttered those famous words: “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”
Artist Hanna Umin adds some final cosmetic touches to Saturn before it’s suspended above the Kenneth C. Griffin Exploring the Planets gallery. Besides being able to look at the celestial orbs, visitors can “walk” on the planets (no spacesuit required) via a circular, surround-screen theater on which visualizations and sounds of other worlds are projected.
The Parabolic Antenna and Reflector Hub satellite (this is an engineering model) can fold its 48 aluminum ribs, much like an umbrella. It’s part of another entirely new exhibit, “One World Connected,” examining how interconnected our planet is as well as how satellites affect our day-to-day lives.

This article appears in the October 2022 issue of Washingtonian.

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Jessica Ruf
Jessica Ruf
Assistant Editor

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