How to Build an Airplane in Seven Days

Aircraft manufacturing doesn't have to be a commercial activity.

How long does it take to turn a pile of parts and sheet metal into an airplane?

A group of aviation enthusiasts—many of whom lacked any building experience—proved it could be done in just a week. More than 2,200 volunteers at the Experimental Aircraft Association’s (EAA) 2022 AirVenture in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, pitched in to build a Waiex-B (pronounced “Y-X-B”), a two-place, Y-tail airplane designed by Sonex Aircraft. It is available as a $50,000 kit. 

The volunteers began on Monday, July 25, and, on the following Sunday, the “One Week Wonder” made its first taxi, followed by its first flight a few weeks later. The Waiex-B can fly more than 500 miles on a tank of fuel.

EAA’s goal was to show the world that anyone can construct an airplane. “I don’t know of any other place on Earth that a group of people can come together, who have never met, never worked together, and build an airplane in a week,” Oshkosh resident Jim Cunningham told a local news station.

The One Week Wonder was part of the EAA’s aircraft collection—until an agreement was reached this year with the National Air and Space Museum for it to be displayed at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia, which exhibits thousands of aviation and space artifacts, including the space shuttle Discovery, a Lockheed SR-71, and a Concorde.

“This airplane will impress visitors with the innovation and technology that is everywhere in the homebuilding movement and recreational aviation,” said Russell Lee, curator of homebuilt aircraft at the National Air and Space Museum. “Although one of the smallest airplanes displayed at the Udvar-Hazy Center, its power to excite visitors about the freedom of flight equals the largest aircraft displayed here.”

He Played an Astronaut on TV

Michael Massimino has a gift for talking about science.

“You know how astronauts have the right stuff? The stuff you have is wrong,” astronaut Michael Massimino says to hapless engineer Howard Wolowitz on an episode of the CBS TV sitcom, The Big Bang Theory. Massimino, of course, was playing a fictionalized version of himself, but in real life, unlike Wolowitz, he does have the right stuff­—and he has two space shuttle missions under his belt to prove it.

Before being selected as an astronaut by NASA, Massimino earned a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and worked as a systems engineer at IBM, a research engineer at McDonnell Douglas Aerospace, and as a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology. 

After being rejected as an astronaut candidate three times, he was selected in 1996, and made it to space on STS-109 in 2002 and STS-125 in 2009. Both of his flights were missions that serviced the Hubble Space Telescope, during which he logged 30 hours outside the shuttle while tending to the telescope. 

Since retiring from NASA, Massimino has embraced his role as a science communicator. To get people excited about spaceflight, he uses media appearances, public talks, and social media (he was the first person to tweet from space). 

Massimino will deliver the National Air and Space Museum’s annual John H. Glenn Lecture in Space History on September 4, 2025, at 8 p.m. at its location in D.C. It will also be streamed live on YouTube. The lecture is sponsored by Boeing.

Spacecraft Carriers? Cool!

SpaceWERX, the innovation arm of the U.S. Space Force, has awarded a $60 million contract to Gravitics, a Seattle-based aerospace startup, to develop an orbital carrier—a staging platform that could store and launch multiple maneuverable space vehicles capable of delivering a rapid response to threats in orbit. The initiative is part of the larger Space Force goal of achieving “space superiority.”

This article, originally titled "Wonders Never Cease," is from the Summer 2025 issue of Air & Space Quarterly, the National Air and Space Museum's signature magazine that explores topics in aviation and space, from the earliest moments of flight to today. Explore the full issue.

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