Podcast

Get a behind the scenes listen of Futures in Space, one of the new galleries, with two of its curators. 

Aviator Pancho Barnes was larger than life. Born at the turn of the century, she spent the next 75 years defying every societal norm she found stuffy, boring, or just plain stupid. 

If you were curating a mixtape that might be heard by aliens billions of years from now, but definitely would be seen by your fellow Earthlings, what would you put on it? Learn about the Voyager Golden Record on the latest AirSpace.

Scientists and engineers are trying to use what they do know to create bat-inspired flying machines, but traits like bats' self-cambering stretchy wing skin, skeletal muscles and tiny hair sensors are proving difficult to replicate. 

There are a lot of different aircraft that fight wildfires, but today we're taking about a truly unique, purpose-built firefighting airplane: the Super Scooper. This plane skims the surface of a body of water, collects a shocking amount through tiny scoop ports, flies off, and dumps it on a wildfire. We talk to a pilot about what it's like to fly one.

We pick up where Part One left off! When you hear 'space race' you probably (correctly) think about the 1960s Soviet Union v. U.S. race to put an astronaut on the Moon. But a few hundred years before, the space race was all about Venus. 

When you hear 'space race' you probably (correctly) think about the 1960s Soviet Union v. U.S. race to put an astronaut on the Moon. But a few hundred years before, the space race was all about Venus.

The oldest Earth rocks we have are 4.3 billion years old, and samples we've brought back from the Moon are even older. But what what does that have to do with craters on Mars? 

Right now there are seven women on Mars... kind of.

All the military aircraft and some of the civilian ones in our collections have to be demilitarized before they go on display or into storage.