A Museum Tour Through Aviation History

Rocketry and Spaceflight (Gallery 113)

The Rocketry and Spaceflight gallery doesn't contain any spacecraft; it but does have a wide variety of artifacts on display that chronicle the very early development of rocketry and spaceflight. Here's a small sampling.

Jules Verne's "From the Earth to the Moon"
(1865)

The noted French science fiction author, Jules Verne, had a fascination with the possibility of spaceflight, and one of his best known novels was From the Earth to the Moon. In this story, he has a group of American aristrocrats develop a huge cannon to fire an manned "bullet" towards the Moon. Coincidentally, Verne had this fictional flight to the Moon start in Florida and end with an ocean landing. Those two bits of theorizing would come true 100 years later with the reality of the Apollo missions to the Moon, which also launched from Florida and ended in splashdowns in the Pacific Ocean. Verne's novel was made into a Hollywood movie in 1958.

Goddard's 1926 Rockets
(1926)

As highlighted on the page on the Milestones of Flight gallery, on March 16, 1926, Dr. Robert Goddard launched the world's first liquid fuel rocket from a field near his aunt's home in Auburn, Massachusetts. The Rocketry and Spaceflight gallery contains additional examples of Goddard rockets, including models of his 1926 rockets. More advanced rocket motors from Goddard's later rockets (culminating with his 1941 "P" class rockets) are also on display here.

Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo Space Suits
(1960s)

Another interesting exhibit shows the development of American space suits from those used by the original Mercury suit, to the more flexible suits used on the longer (up to 14 days) Gemini flights, to the EVA suits used by the Apollo astronauts during their historic moonwalks.

The Museum's main display area for major spacecraft is the Space Race gallery (formerly call the "Space Hall"). That will be the next, extended stop on our tour.

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Last Updated: January 1, 2003