National Air and Space Museum
Beyond the Limits: Flight Enters the Computer Age
May 12, 1989 – May 23, 2011
The gallery illustrates how the electronic computer has revolutionized aerospace engineering, aviation, and spaceflight. Computers are used to design and build air- and spacecraft, monitor air traffic, navigate and control flights, and train pilots.
The exhibition is divided into 7 areas:
- Design
- Aerodynamics
- Computer-Aided Manufacture
- Flight Testing
- Air Operations
- Flight Simulators
- Space Operators
Highlights include:
- X-29: forward-swept-wing airplane (full-scale model)
- Cray-1 supercomputer: once the world's fastest computer
- Interactive computers: Visitors can test their skills at designing the wing of a jet airplane, guiding a lunar landing safely to the moon's surface, and landing an airplane at a busy airport in New York.
- HiMAT: robot airplane that pioneered the use of fly-by-wire technology, in which a computer—not the pilot—controls the aircraft's flaps, rudder, and ailerons
- Minuteman III ICBM Guidance and Control System: the brain of the Minuteman missile, the standard U.S. land-based intercontinental ballistic missile
- Full-size space shuttle cockpit simulator
- A non-flown flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder (black box) used to determine the cause of aircraft accidents
Catalogue
