Naval Dentist Tom Davidson yearned to score a spot in the back seat of one of the fighter planes of the flight group he was assigned to. After patient waiting, his opportunity for a joyride finally came. After landing from the exhilarating experience, he started writing a letter to his family detailing the thrill of flight…but he never finished or sent that letter. Tom shares a deeply personal story about his aviation experience in this episode of The Flight Deck, immersing us in the world of so...
Mar 23, 2021•20 min
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 seeing...
Feb 23, 2021•21 min
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
Feb 02, 2021•28 min
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 design...
Jan 05, 2021•23 min
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
Dec 22, 2020•41 min
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 liste...
Dec 08, 2020•1 hr 6 min
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 donation. https://pages.museumofflight.org...
Nov 24, 2020•1 hr 2 min
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 ow...
Oct 27, 2020•27 min
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 prev...
Oct 06, 2020•19 min
“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, Gemini, ...
Sep 15, 2020•17 min
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 which f...
Sep 01, 2020•20 min
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 northern r...
Aug 18, 2020•21 min
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.
Aug 04, 2020•32 min
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.
Jun 30, 2020•37 min
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?
Jun 02, 2020•37 min
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!
May 05, 2020•35 min
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!
Apr 07, 2020•32 min
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.
Mar 24, 2020•34 min
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 Ju...
Mar 10, 2020•12 min
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.
Feb 25, 2020•14 min
Peggy Phillips and the WASPs by The Museum of Flight
Feb 11, 2020•18 min
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 coa...
Jan 28, 2020•14 min
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 like: H...
Jan 14, 2020•19 min
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 smal...
Jan 02, 2020•14 min
Apollo 12 Astronaut Pete Conrad has a lot to live up to. NASA’s idea of the astronaut image meant that the astronauts needed to conform to specific ideas of the ideal American. Nancy Conrad, Pete’s wife, talks about her late husband and all the Apollo astronauts who had live the “astronaut image,” at least publicly, and how that impacted their lives and the lives of the people around them. This interview was conducted part of The Museum of Flight’s High School Outreach program, by High School Ju...
Nov 21, 2019•9 min
Conspiracy theories are unavoidable when your Museum deals with topics in science, but this week’s guest, Tony Gondola, outreach coordinator for the New Mexico Museum of Space History, has some good advice on how to debunk these unsound ideas. Gondola also explains how the people who formulate conspiracies profit from those who fall for them. In dealing with Moon landing science, Gondola also has experience with other theories. “Right now, flat Earth stuff is everywhere,” he says. “All claims of...
Oct 31, 2019•16 min
After the Apollo 11 astronauts landed on the Moon, they embarked on an equally fascinating journey: a global goodwill press tour in Air Force One. Dr. Teasel Muir-Harmony explains the importance of the tour and how the astronauts’ lives changed post-Moon landing. Dr. Teasel Muir-Harmony, author of Apollo to the Moon, an examination of 50 fascinating artifacts from the Apollo 11 mission, discusses how the global good will tour that the astronauts took aboard VC 137 B (otherwise known as Boeing 70...
Aug 28, 2019•16 min
First Korean astronaut SoYeon Yi shares her memories of going to space and the harrowing return to Earth after 11 days in the International Space Station. Before listening to part 4 of Soyeon Yi’s story, be sure to listen to Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 ! After years of studying and training, SoYeon Yi finally traveled to space for the very first time on April 8, 2008 along with astronauts Peggy Whitson and Yuri Malenchenko, both of whom had already completed space missions. A trip to space has a ...
Aug 06, 2019•16 min
Buzz Aldrin, the second human to set foot on the Moon, recalls the Apollo 11 mission and how one felt tip pen helped the astronauts successfully return to Earth. Today we honor the 50th anniversary of the first human footsteps on the Moon! This day is especially significant because the Smithsonian Institute has chosen The Museum of Flight as the venue for hosting the command module Columbia, the spacecraft that Apollo 11 astronauts took to the Moon and back, and it’s the only piece of the spaces...
Jul 20, 2019•17 min
Jerrie Cobb and the women behind the Women in Space program unsuccessfully lobbied Congress in 1962 to include women in astronaut training, but they still led the way for women’s inclusion in the aerospace industry. With the Women in Space Program being cancelled, the major players behind it—Jerrie Cobb, Jackie Cochran, and Janie Hart (the wife of a Michigan Senator)—met with Congress subcommittees in 1962 to get the program up and running. NASA astronauts also participated in these subcommittee...
Jul 10, 2019•16 min
