Unbridled wonder. The sort of joy that just seems to radiate out at you. That is the subject of today’s podcast episode, where Museum of Flight President and CEO Matt Hayes takes us back over 100 years to an historic aviation event in Los Angeles, captured in a photo of four women found in our Museum’s digital archives. He talks about the marvels the women may have been witnessing, as this was the first event in the United States where aircraft were really showcased to the masses. Imagine...

An aviation conspiracy dating back 100 years continues to capture the imaginations of New Zealanders. What’s the truth behind this story, involving secret caves, military secrets, and the first Boeing airplane? Host Sean Mobley sat down with Museum of Flight Docent Leslie Czechowski to dig into this curious episode of aerospace history which spans continents and centuries. Full Show Notes: www.museumofflight.org/flightdeck

You may know Alexander Graham Bell for his telephone, but did you know he had a hand in some of the most bizarre, strange-looking experimental aviation designs? Today’s episode is a chat with Museum of Flight Curator Matthew Burchette (of “Curator on the Loose” fame) about these bonkers designs and the adventure of experimentation in the early days of contemporary aviation, when hopeful engineers had bold visions, big ideas, and incorrect understanding of aerodynamics as they put together...

In this final episode of 2020, we welcome author Phil Stamper onto the show for a discussion of adapting space history into fiction for a modern young adult audience, the literary inspirations for his book The Gravity of Us, and the realities LGBTQ+ astronauts faced throughout NASA history from Sally Ride all the way back to the days of Project Mercury. View full shownotes here: https://blog.museumofflight.org/flightdeck/the-gravity-of-us

What happens at the end of the world? Today’s episode is the finale of the playthrough of “Before There Were Stars,” a storytelling game about creating myths based on constellations. Join a team of science educators from around the world as they follow in the footsteps of the ancient storytellers and look to the stars for inspiration and a way to describe the world around them, bringing their stories to a conclusion at the End of Time. This episode will not make much sense unless you first...

Join a team of storytellers as they look up at the stars to create myths and legends based on what they see. Today’s episode is Part I of a playthrough of the storytelling family game “Before There Were Stars,” featuring science educators from around the world improvising a creation myth based on images seen in an imaginary night sky. Sit back, relax, and enjoy the story.   You can keep the podcast and The Museum of Flight going by making a tax-deductible...

We think of history in terms of grand, sweeping events and often forget that actual humans are at the center of it. Today’s episode reminds us that people drive history, everyday people like you and me who are swept up or have to react to these larger events. The discussion centers around Mike Caputo, a World War II B-24 Navigator, and his daughter Yvonne, the woman who helped him open up about the wartime experiences he’d hidden deep inside. While helping her father document his story in his...

It’s common to hear a visitor to The Museum of Flight wonder how astronauts go to the bathroom in space. Today is the continuation of a conversation with Museum of Flight staff member Brenda Mandt, who spearheads the tours of the Museum’s NASA Space Shuttle Full Fuselage Trainer, where she talks about modern space toilets on the Space Shuttle and on the ISS. She also talks about what did and didn’t work about toilet and personal care needs when women joined the US space program. As with the...

“How do astronauts go to the bathroom in space?” This is a question we hear often at the Museum, asked by people young and old from all around the world. Host Sean Mobley enlisted Museum of Flight expert Brenda Mandt, one of the masterminds behind the Museum’s NASA Space Shuttle Full Fuselage Trainer Tours, to investigate how humans carry out this universal body function in space. In this first of two episodes, Brenda shares about the early tests and solutions developed for the Mercury,...

Bill Wilson, a Vietnam Veteran and Museum of Flight Docent, features in this episode of The Flight Deck, sharing his story of bailing out of his crashing General Dynamics F-111 Aardvark just a few miles from Hanoi, the capital of the Communist government of Vietnam, during the Vietnam War. Surrounded by hills, jungle, and enemy combatants, Wilson did everything he could to evade capture long enough for a rescue attempt, a situation made more complicated by the constantly changing weather...

Museum of Flight Docent Jerry Coy returns to The Flight Deck to share a story of survival behind enemy lines. When Captain Roger Locher’s McDonnell F-4 Phantom was hit by fire from a Vietnamese MiG-21, he safely bailed out…only to realize he was months away by foot from safety, and was deep in Communist territory, making an air rescue extremely dangerous. In order to extract him, the Air Force would have to essentially “pause” the war. Today’s episode details Locher’s saga deep in the...

Wrapping up the Collections miniseries, today we’re looking at the oldest artifact in our archives. To find it, we need to go back behind-the-scenes, into the Rare Book Room of the Museum’s Harl V. Brackin library to find an object that predates the US Constitution.

Located in the Charles Simonyi Space Gallery, an exhibit space dedicated to modern space exploration, you’ll find the youngest artifact in our collection: An American flag flown to space on the historic Blue Origin New Shepard NS-3 Launch. In today’s episode of the Flight Deck, we’ll take a look at the flag and it’s story, and also learn why stories are at the heart of any museum…and how the stories told in museums have changed over time.

Mike Mullane grew up a child of the space race and realized his dream of space flight as an astronaut for the Space Shuttle program. In today’s interview, which was recorded as part of a Trivia Night program the Museum put on, he takes questions from the audience about his training and experiences in weightlessness. He also helps us answer a few trivia questions about life as an astronaut. Can you get all of the correct answers before he does?

Host Sean Mobley brings the second part of this behind-the-scenes mini-series featuring the “extremes” of the Museum of Flight’s collection. Today we’re staying very close to home on our Museum of Flight campus to look at our Biggest artifact, something so big that moving it took boats, barges, and cranes!

Host Sean Mobley brings us part one of an all-new mini-series featuring The Museum of Flight’s most extreme artifacts. In this series you will uncover the smallest, largest, oldest and youngest objects in our collection. Join us for a journey of wonderment and surprise as we discuss some of our most unique artifacts!

This week we are honored to speak with Museum of Flight docent and Holocaust survivor, Pete Metzelaar. Listen as he describes his first-hand account of the devastating sound of war planes flying over Holland during World War II, and his journey to freedom.

This week’s episode of the Flight Deck Podcast is the first in a series associated with the Museum wide initiative to feature untold stories in honor of the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II. Today you will hear from Museum docent Reiner Decher who was a young boy in Germany during WWII. Reiner recalls the end of the war through the eyes of a child, escaping Germany with his family through Operation Paperclip. Reiner’s father worked in aviation developing cutting edge technology for...

We dive into part two of our interview with Museum docent and Air Force Colonel Peggy Phillips. Peggy remembers her time in the military flying C-141 cargo airplanes, eventually transitioning to C-17 aircraft in 2001 where she became the first female C-17 squadron commander.

Peggy Phillips and the WASPs by The Museum of Flight

Undoubtedly one of the greatest achievements of man has been stepping foot on the Moon. In 1969, the famous Apollo 11 mission fulfilled this dream. Fast forward to 2013, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos commences an expedition to find the powerful Saturn V F-1 rocket engines that propelled Neil Armstrong into space for the imperative Moon landing. The expedition presented many challenges, one of those being that eight other Apollo missions were said to be located in the same general area off of the...

Matthew Burchette joined The Museum of Flight in late 2019 as our Senior Curator, launching a new stage in a career spanning several decades of supporting museums in their quest to tell amazing stories and spark inspiration. In today’s episode of The Flight Deck, host Sean Mobley chats with Matthew about his career briefly before moving into a behind-the-scenes discussion on some of the philosophical underpinnings behind our museum and some of the big questions we wrestle with, questions...

On the eve of a New Year, join host Sean Mobley on a trip behind-the-scenes on the making of an exhibit at The Museum of Flight. Two unassuming display cases outside Wings Café at the Museum contain one of the most looked-at exhibits on the whole campus; the rotating display put together by the NorthWest Scale Modelers Association. A combination of the prime location of the exhibit at a popular crossroads within the Museum, the constantly changing display, and a human fascination with shiny...

In Part II of his interview with World War II veteran Jim Marich, High Schooler Steven Hanley asks about bailing out of aircraft and other life-or-death situations. They also discuss the emotional toll of the war, and how Jim’s volunteering at The Museum of Flight helped him find healing and peace with his experience as a B-29 flight engineer. Jim Marich presents pieces of his story as part of The Museum of Flight’s daily 1:00 Storytelling program. Jim has also recorded an extensive Oral...

Jim Marich, World War II veteran, will tell you he’s lucky to be alive. In today’s episode, he shared the story of the time his B-29 ran out of fuel and went down in the middle nowhere of the Pacific Ocean. This is a story he enjoys telling, and when asked about it he’ll tell you with a wink that the story never changes, except that each time the sharks seem to get a bit bigger. This interview was conducted part of The Museum of Flight’s High School Outreach program, by High School Freshman...