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Virginia Air and Space Center

The Virginia Air and Space Center...

... is a museum and educational facility in Hampton, Virginia that also serves as the visitors center for NASA's Langley Research Center and Langley Air Force Base.

Their own words

Explore 100 years of flight with more than 30 aircraft, take the yoke at a number of flight simulators, and see awe-inspiring space-flight artifacts. Be amazed by the Apollo 12 Command Module and NASA's new Orion space craft. Investigate science, technology, engineering and math through Cool Science and changing exhibits. Watch a movie or be part of one in the state-of-the-art Riverside 3D IMAX Theater!

The photos

This is an amazing place for a modeler. The museum not only has all the aerospace displays, it also has ships and interactive displays. They have three 1/48 aircraft carriers, USS Langley, a Nimitz-class carrier and a 1/48 Yorktown-class. With one exception there are more displays than I can describe so I'll let the photos do the talking. That exception is the most unique display, the F-4E Phantom. A docent told me that it is the only aircraft that can not be moved. It was suspended and the building erected around it. All other aircraft can be disassembled. I was particularly amazed by the open stairway that allowed one to "climb and maintain" the altitude of the suspended aircraft. That allowed me to get up close and personal to heretofore unnoticed detail of the F-4E and the "Zipper", the F-104. The B-24D cockpit is particularly interesting, too. Entering the display area one finds glassed in display cases with constant-scale aircraft through the ages, as well as several ships of different eras. (I regret I did not note if they are all the same scale of the airplanes.) I can highly recommend this museum. We were there about 3 hours and I hardly touched the space wing.