Most of the floor space at Seattle’s Museum of Flight is set aside to celebrate past glories of aerospace – but “Above and Beyond,” a traveling exhibition that opens this weekend, is different: It’s all about what lies ahead.
During a Thursday preview, schoolkids thronged to watch a wraparound video about the future of flight, play big-screen video games, get their selfies taken on a virtual Mars and check out exhibits about drones, 3-D printing and next-generation spacecraft.
The Boeing Co. is presenting the interactive exhibition as part of this year’s centennial celebration, but “Above and Beyond” goes far beyond the story of the company’s first 100 years.
“It doesn’t just concentrate on what Boeing has done. It concentrates on the future,” Doug King, the Museum of Flight’s president and CEO, said as he watched teens and tweens swarm past. “And these are the people who are going to create that future.”
The exhibition has already been at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. That means the producers at Texas-based Evergreen Exhibitions already have a pretty good idea which attractions will be the most popular. Here are the top five, as listed by Mike Kempf, Evergreen Exhibitions’ vice president of marketing:
