One of the most popular galleries at the National Air and Space Museum is getting even bigger, with more than 50 interactive exhibits.

How Things Fly is generously supported by: TEXTRON; AAR Corp.; David P. Storch; Ira Eichner; Daniel and Jennifer Baker

Why does an airplane have wings? How does a spacecraft stay in orbit? What pushes a hot-air balloon into the sky? Is there gravity in space?

Since opening in 1996, the How Things Fly gallery at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. has helped answer these questions, and more, for millions of visitors. In fact, How Things Fly has been one of our most popular exhibitions and the only space in the Museum dedicated exclusively to hands-on learning. Building upon this popularity, the new Textron How Things Fly will reimagine and expand the gallery that seeks to answer the singular question that underlies every single one of our artifacts: How do things fly? (The gallery’s  companion web pages are also among the Museum’s most popular, at howthingsfly.si.edu.)

The gallery will continue to explain key concepts with mechanical devices, computer interactives, touchable models, and live educational programs.

But that’s where the similarities end. The new gallery’s expanded size—with the addition of a second level—makes room for several improvements. First, the gallery will have more than 50 interactives that explore content not covered in the old exhibit—including helicopter and drone flight, as well as more extensive coverage of spaceflight.

Second, visitors will no longer have to leave the gallery to see the design features of air- and spacecraft in the context of what they’ve learned, because more than 30 relevant artifacts from the Museum’s collection will now be displayed there.

Third, the new gallery features dozens of stories about people who design, build, and fly air- and spacecraft. Their stories will introduce visitors to a diverse assemblage of people and careers, ensuring each visitor can see themselves and imagine a possible future in the aerospace industry. And fourth, the themes of flight are divided between atmospheric- and spaceflight, making it easier for visitors to investigate what most interests them. 

Although both air- and spacecraft contend with the forces of gravity and air, spacecraft confront the additional challenge of functioning in a vacuum as they travel further up and away from Earth’s gravitational influence. Visitors can learn the difference between these environments in two sections located at each of the gallery’s two entrances. The atmospheric-flight-environment section will provide visitors the chance to heat the air in a large hot-air balloon and watch the buoyant force of that air push the balloon upward. The space-environment section features a tower from which visitors can drop objects from the gallery ceiling and watch them “float” in a temporary microgravity environment.

Different environments dictate the different design features for air- and spacecraft. An aircraft needs wings or rotors and a source of propulsion to fly. Spacecraft require a powerful enough engine to push them through Earth’s atmosphere and then into space. Next to the flight-environment sections, visitors will find interactives that illustrate why air- and spacecraft are designed to minimize or maximize the forces of flight—lift, gravity (weight), drag, and thrust. All four forces act on an aircraft flying in Earth’s atmosphere. But only two forces—thrust and gravity (weight)—act on spacecraft flying beyond the atmosphere.

An interactive highlight in the aircraft-design section includes a wind tunnel large enough for visitors to stand in, where they can feel the lift and drag created by a variety of wings they can wear on their arms. A launch platform will enable them to blast different rockets skyward while exploring the connection between a rocket’s mass and thrust.

Several notable artifacts further tell the story. For instance, in the atmospheric-flight section, there will be a Continental C-125-2 piston engine and a General Electric J85-GE-17A turbojet engine that visitors can manipulate. In the spaceflight section, we’ll have a full-scale model of the Mariner 9 space probe (the first spacecraft to orbit Mars) and an actual WAC-Corporal rocket, the United States’ first successful sounding rocket.

Another question the gallery will consider: How is flying faster than the speed of sound different than flying subsonic? Like ships pushing through the sea, fast-flying air- and spacecraft push aside air molecules as they zoom through the atmosphere, creating waves in their wake. As an air- or spacecraft flies faster than the speed of sound, the air ahead of it starts to compress, shock waves form, and drag increases dramatically.

At the back of the gallery, visitors will discover interactives illustrating these elements of high-speed flight, including the only supersonic wind tunnel in a museum or science center through which visitors can generate their very own shock waves.

Prominent objects in the high-speed flight section include several wind tunnel models—a Lockheed SST (supersonic transport), General Dynamics National Aerospace Plane, Apollo command module, and a space shuttle orbiter.

How do you control an air- or spacecraft? On the second-floor mezzanine, visitors will find interactives that help them learn about the completely different methods pilots use when flying air- and spacecraft. Movable surfaces on an airplane’s wings and tail—rotors on a helicopter—enable pilots to direct their movement and maintain their orientation through Earth’s atmosphere.

But in the near vacuum of space, without air to create pressure differences, spacecraft must use thrusters (small engines) to maintain a stable orientation and direct themselves along a specific path. Interactive exhibits in these sections include an actual Cessna Skyhawk aircraft that visitors can climb into—where they can manipulate the control surfaces—as well as a gyro-chair that people can use to change their attitude (orientation).

Other objects of note include a blended-wing-body wind tunnel model that was used to test the flight characteristics of tailless aircraft and a thruster triad (a group of three small rocket engines) designed for NASA’s Manned Maneuvering Unit.

Other highlights of the gallery include the AAR Design Hangar—an interactive experience introducing people to the engineering design process. Hands-on activities will encourage visitors to conceptualize, build, and test prototypes to overcome different design challenges.

Every artifact in the National Air and Space Museum has a story to tell about the history of flight—and about the men and women who found new ways to break the bonds of gravity, pushing ever higher and faster. The new Textron How Things Fly gallery promises to enhance the understanding and appreciation of these one-of-a-kind objects and their creators by answering the crucial question in the back of every visitor’s mind: What exactly keeps airplanes and orbiting satellites from falling out of the sky?

Mike Hulslander  is responsible for science-focused educational programs and exhibitions at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum.