Museum of Flight

The Museum of Flight is a private non-profit air and space museum at King County International Airport/Boeing Field in Tukwila, Washington, south of downtown Seattle. It was established in 1965 and is fully accredited by the American Association of Museums. As the largest private air and space museum in the world, it also hosts the largest K-12 educational programs in the world. The Museum attracts about 500,000 visitors every year. In 2006 it served nearly 120,000 students through both its onsite programs A Challenger Learning Center, an Aviation Learning Center and a summer camp (ACE) and outreach programs that travel throughout Washington and Oregon.

The Museum of Flight has more than 80 aircraft.

On its grounds is the Personal Courage Wing (PCW) with 28 World War I and World War II aircraft from several countries including Germany, Russia, and Japan.

There is also the "Red Barn", a registered historic site also known as Building No. 105. In the early 1900s it was Boeing's original manufacturing plant. Through photographs, film, oral histories, and restoration of work stations the exhibits in the Red Barn illustrate how wooden aircraft structure with fabric overlays were manufactured in the early years of aviation and provides a history of aviation development through 1958.

In June of 2007 the Museum opened a new space exhibit: "Space: Exploring the New Frontier", which traces the evolution of space flight from the times of Dr. Robert Goddard to the present and into future commercial spaceflight.

The museum maintains a restoration facility at Paine Field in Everett with about 39 ongoing projects including a de Havilland Comet 4 jet airliner, a Jetstar, a FM-2 Wildcat, among many. A previous project, the only flyable Boeing 247 in existence, is based from the airfield at the restoration center. A restored B-17, currently the only flyable B-17F variant of the B-17[4] and a B-29 in progress are currently hangared at Boeing Field.

The Museum has a library dedicated to aviation that is open to the public. The library contains the Dalhberg military aviation collection and the Jeppesen collection. The library also accepts research requests from the general public.

In June 2010 the museum broke ground on a $12 million new building to house a Space Shuttle it hoped to receive from NASA. The new building will include multisensory exhibits that emphasize stories from the visionaries, designers, pilots, and crews of the Space Shuttle. Though the museum did not receive the shuttle, it did receive a shuttle mockup that was used to train astronauts. Because it is a trainer and not an actual shuttle, people would be able to go inside the shuttle.

Text source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Museum_of_Flight
Photo source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Museum_of_Flight,_Seattle.jpg

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