How Things Fly has closed as part of the Museum’s renovation. Learn more about the project to transform the National Air and Space Museum.  

Details about the closed exhibition, as well as the original exhibition description, can be found below.

How does an airplane stay aloft? How can something as insubstantial as air support all that weight? Why do you become "weightless" in space? How can you propel yourself there, with no air to push against? These and many other questions are answered in How Things Fly, a gallery devoted to explaining the basic principles that allow aircraft and spacecraft to fly.

The emphasis here is "hands-on." Dozens of exhibits invite you to push, pull, press, lift, slide, handle, touch, twist, turn, spin, bend, and balance. Here you can discover for yourself answers to things you've always wondered about flight. You can explore the nature of gravity and air; how wings work; supersonic flight; aircraft and rocket propulsion; flying in space; and more.