That Time I Spent the Night at the Air and Space Museum

On Friday, July 1, the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. celebrated its 40th birthday with an all night event inside the museum. Much like when the Magic Kingdom and Disneyland decided to celebrate Leap Day in 2012 with a 24-hour event, this Air and Space overnight was special simply because it had never been done. And I was there.

I’m going to start discussing my night by jumping to the end and admitting that I lied to you in the title. I didn’t make it all night–in fact, I barely made it past 3am. There are lots of reasons why and several of them are “I am very lame,” but I’ll get to the others as we go.

The Launch Crew

Most of the event was free of charge, but beginning at 8pm there was a 2-hour Launch Crew event. This event was $40 per person (21-and-over only) and here was the pitch:

Get exclusive access to Museum staff, special guests, and our outstanding objects. Sample food and beverages from DC area establishments and help launch the night’s festivities.

It is true that the above happened, but I don’t think they kept with the spirit of that description. Yes, museum staff were hanging around, but it seemed mostly to keep us from wandering (and they had no notifiers of who they were, so I didn’t even know what questions to ask). The special guests were there for a bit, but there were not many of them (see Destination Moon below). The objects were outstanding, but they kept us bottled in basically two different sections (one at a time), so the only non-busy section I saw was one that I’m pretty sure I wasn’t supposed to go into.

By far the most disappointing part, however, was the sample food and drink. I never expected unlimited booze, because that’s just asking for trouble, but for $40/person I expected a few beers. What we got was a checklist and instructions that we could have one of each item on them. That included a few snacks, one cocktail, and one beer–and not even a full beer, a six-ounce cup. Yes, I ended up getting three cocktails because I am sneaky and the woman checking off that square tended to chat with other people, but that’s not the point.

There was nothing in particular that felt like the $40 was worth the price and everyone else I spoke with felt the same way. It was cool being in the museum with a smattering of people, and our second floor overlook of everyone else coming in to the newly redesigned Boeing Milestones of Flight Hall was interesting, but it was kind of boring.

Milestones of Flight

As mentioned, the Boeing Milestones of Flight Hall was newly redesigned and officially unveiled at 9pm on July 1. Since members of the Launch Crew still had a private gallery upstairs (the Pioneers of Flight), I mostly stayed there. Later in the night, however, I did wander down into the new entrance hall and it is really well done. The star is the recreation of the LM-2 Lunar Module (seen in photo above), although I dare say the most popular is the Starship Enterprise model (from the original Star Trek TV series). I won’t go into detail of everything in the hall, but I did on our Twitter feed if you scroll back to July 1.

Destination Moon

The highlight of my night was the showing of the 1950s classic Destination Moon in the IMAX theater. It wasn’t actually shown in IMAX, but it was shown with live commentary from Kevin Murphy (Tom Servo from Mystery Science Theater 3000), a comedian known as the Bad Astronomer, and two experts from the museum. If you are familiar with Mystery Science Theater 3000, it was just like that–we watched a bad (but funny-bad) movie while these people made jokes. It was great.

Other movies such as 2001: A Space Odyssey, Top Gun, and Galaxy Quest were being shown in the IMAX theater during the night. Originally I planned to see (at least part of) 2001, but the schedule got severely delayed and I was afraid of falling asleep during a long, sometimes slow, movie beginning at 3:30am. From what I heard about the other movie showings, they were filled with other nappers as well.

The Rest of My Night

My original plan was to do some Facebook Live chats, Snapchat stories, etc. to keep me active. I also figured I would get some really good photos of the galleries with few people in them. Oh boy was I wrong. All 7 hours I was inside the museum were quite busy…busier than I had seen that museum during the day even. As Len Testa and I found out when we attempted a live recording in the Air and Space Museum, sound bounces around in there. I tried a few test recordings and–even with a lavalier microphone–all I got was background noise.

To make matters worse, the museum kept doing quizzes and scavenger hunts. Both of these were well done and performed with the best of intentions. However, since almost the entire crowd was in their teens and twenties, many of which clearly came from the bars, these events led to running and shouting throughout the museum. I don’t mean to sound like a cranky old man (I kind of am), and it was enjoyable–it really was–but I guessed wrong about what it would be and didn’t have a backup plan.

Once it became clear that I couldn’t do what I had hoped to, I decided just to get some sleep. If they ever do something like this again I would go again, but I would definitely have a different plan. The event was well done and I applaud the museum and their wonderful staff for the effort, it just wasn’t the quiet night at the museum that this cranky old man thought it would be (geez I sound miserable…I’m not always).

What do you think, am I just being a crab? Was anyone else there?