Next week marks the 40th anniversary of an important moment in space history, when astronauts and cosmonauts greeted each other warmly in their docked Apollo and Soyuz spacecraft while orbiting above the Earth.

In early 2010, I received an e-mail out of the blue from Julie Decker, the chief curator of the Anchorage Museum, asking if I would be interested in co-curating an exhibition on flight and Alaska.

It was about twenty years ago, but no one in the Museum’s Archives Division can now remember who first asked us the immortal question - what‘s the wingspan of a Lockheed P-38 Lightning?

When the National Air and Space Museum opened in 1976, the production model of the Starship Enterprise was prominently and dramatically displayed hanging at the entrance of “Life in the Universe” gallery. Later, when that gallery closed, and the starship was moved to several other locations within the museum.