Virginia Air and Space Museum
A very well done museum
There are a couple of different kinds of venues available to enjoy live music. Each venue can accentuate talent or poor performance. Smaller venues allow true talent to shine because a performer becomes more intimate with their audience. The Virginia Air and Space Museum, Langley NASA is a small venue museum and it's fantastic!
Again living in Chicago and believing all the advertising, we are told we have world class museums. Some of the best in the world. Now after traveling and having visited many other cities' museums, Chicago may have been amazing 30 years ago but they have fallen behind. Now with that said, I think this museum was better than the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. And, as an added bonus for us, this museum was part of our ASTM reciprocal program because we are members at Museum of Science and Industry so we got in free.
We only had about 1-1/2 hours before it closed. And as a strange side note, when it did close we were still looking at exhibits and the employees left, were never asked to leave. We walked around for another 15 mins after close and finally left, it felt weird being there after hours with no one there. Anyway, we had limited time so I told the kids we would go look at a couple of things and maybe come back at another time. I wasn't expecting to like it so much.
Why Virginia Air and Space Museum was so good
The museum is special for a couple of reasons. First, they have an amazing collection of object and it is focused around NASA. Second, all of the exhibits work, which is not the norm at many museums. Third, the space in the museum is really well laid out. And lastly, the place is intimate, a great care has been taken to tell a story at the Virginia Air and Space Museum.
A NASA Capsul
All of the exhibits and pieces are available at eye level. You can reach out an touch most of them. It is great to be so close.
NASA Langley Plane
They have a cockpit for a 737 passenger. Many museums have the passenger area not the cockpit, so the kids played for a while flying the airplane.For the very short time at Virginia Air and Space Museum we had a lot of fun. We flew the space shuttle in a simulated mission, drove the Mars Rover and simulated launched rockets. They have a rooftop deck that had an amazing view of Norfolk. Furthermore the kids, for the next couple of days, begged to go back but we never were able to make it. It was definitely tops in our books!
We also enjoyed the Nauticus Museum if you are in the same area, it has the USS Wisconsin BB docked and available for tours.
