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VOICE ONE:

This is Faith Lapidus.

VOICE TWO:

And this is Steve Ember withEXPLORATIONS in VOA Special English. Last month, the SmithsonianNational Air and Space Museum opened its new Steven F. Udvar-Hazy(OOD-var HAH-zee) Center in Virginia, near Washington, D-C. Today wetell about this new museum for famous aircraft.

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VOICE ONE:

The new Udvar-Hazy Center has been open for a little more thanthree weeks. However, it has already proven to be extremely popular.On December twenty-sixth, the road leading to the new museum wasblocked with vehicles. Local television stations showed pictures ofthousands of automobiles waiting their turn to enter the museum'sparking area. Some vehicles were turned away. There was not enoughroom. The parking area was full. The new center may prove to be aspopular as the main Air and Space Museum in Washington.

VOICE TWO:

The National Air and Space Museum is perhaps the most visitedmuseum in the world. Almost ten-million people visit the museum everyear to see famous aircraft. They can see the Wright Brothers famousflyer. It was the first controllable aircraft to fly with an engine.It flew for the first time on December Seventeenth,nineteen-oh-three.

Visitors to the National Air and Space Museum can also seeCharles Lindbergh's airplane, "The Spirit of Saint Louis." He becamethe first pilot to fly across the Atlantic Ocean alone and withoutstopping, from the United States to France. That flight took placein May of nineteen-twenty-seven.

Near the famous plane is an orangerocket plane that became the first aircraft to fly faster than thespeed of sound. Pilot Chuck Yeager made that flight innineteen-forty-seven. Visitors to the museum can even touch a smallpiece of the moon. It was brought back to Earth by Americanastronauts who walked on the moon.

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VOICE ONE:

The main job of a museum is to keep and protect important objectsfrom the past so they can be studied, examined and enjoyed in thefuture. Displaying these collected objects helps the publicunderstand the importance of a museum's work.

Finding room to keep a collection of aircraft has always been aproblem for the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum. Thismuseum only holds about ten percent of the aircraft it has collectedover the years.

Another ten percent of the aircraft have been loaned to othermuseums. The other eighty percent have been kept in storagebuildings for safekeeping. Some of them have been stored for as longas fifty years.

The opening of the Museum's new Udvar-Hazy Center has changedthis. As many as three-hundred aircraft will be placed on display inthe new museum. More than eighty of them have already been placed inthe building for the public to see.

VOICE TWO:

The new center was named forSteven Udvar-Hazy. He came to the United States from Hungary. Hebecame very successful in the aircraft industry. He became sosuccessful that he gave the National Air and Space Museumsixty-five-million dollars to help build the new center.

Mister Udvar-Hazy said he wanted to give something to America forthe opportunities he found here. He also wanted to pass on his loveof aviation to the people of the future.

VOICE ONE:

Mister Udvar-Hazy's gift helped build the center. It did not paythe total cost. That is expected to be more thanthree-hundred-million dollars. This includes the design,construction and cost of moving the aircraft into the new center.

The largest of the new center's several buildings is huge. It isthirty-one meters high, almost seventy-six meters wide, andthree-hundred meters long.

Visitors can see and walk near the aircraft on three levels inthe main building. They can walk near the largest aircraft on themuseum's floor. Smaller aircraft are hung from the ceiling. Visitorscan examine them from several walkways that are about fifteen metersabove the floor. They can see other aircraft that are hung near theceiling. They can do this from walkways that are near the top of thebuilding.

Computers at small information centers show close-up photographsof the aircraft. These photographs include pictures taken inside theaircraft. Visitors can use the computers to see the pilot'scontrols, passenger areas and other parts of the inside of theaircraft. In the future, these pictures will be on the new museum'scomputer link with the Internet.

VOICE TWO:

All of the aircraft that will be on display are important to thehistory of flight. Some are huge. The largest aircraft in thecollection was given to the museum only a few months ago. It is theAir France Concorde.

The plane landed at nearby Dulles International Airport on itslast flight. It was pulled by a special vehicle to the museum.

The Concorde was one of the few passenger airplanes that couldfly faster than the speed of sound. A Concorde flight from Paris,France to Washington, D-C usually took less than four hours.

The new center also has very small aircraft in the collection.One is the Boeing P-Twenty-Six-A Peashooter. The little Peashootercould hide under the wing of the Concorde. In fact, several of themcould hide there.

The Peashooter was a military fighter plane. It was built in theearly nineteen-thirties. It is also one of the most beautifulaircraft in the new center. Most military aircraft are not paintedwith bright colors. But the Peashooter has wings paintedyellow-gold. The body is painted black with white strips down itsside. The front is painted a shiny white.

VOICE ONE:

The new Udvar-Hazy Center also holds the fastest aircraft everybuilt. It is the Lockheed S-R-Seventy-One Blackbird. It looks like arocket plane, but it is not. It has an aircraft jet engine, not arocket engine. The military used the Blackbird to gatherintelligence. It carried cameras, not guns. It used its great speedto fly away from danger.

The Blackbird is a large aircraft. It is painted with a dullblack paint and looks like a bullet. In fact it is faster than manybullets. It could travel at three times the speed of sound.

That is about three-thousand-five-hundred-forty kilometers anhour. The last time a Blackbird flew was from Los Angeles,California to Dulles International Airport near the museum.

The United States Air Force flew it for the last time to deliverit to the Udvar-Hazy Center. That flight from California to Virginiatook only one hour, four minutes and twenty seconds.

VOICE TWO:

Many of the aircraft in the collection were built for militaryuse. However, the museum is not a just a collection of militaryaircraft. Aviation experts say new flight technology has often beenused first in the design of military aircraft. For example, thefirst jet was a military airplane. Civilian aircraft designersquickly used jet technology because jets are faster and cheaper.

An aircraft called the Dash-Eighty is a good example of militarytechnology being used for civilian purposes. The Boeing Companybuilt the aircraft. Its real name is the BoeingThree-Six-Seven-dash-Eighty.

It was designed as the first modern jet passenger aircraft. Itfirst flew in July of nineteen-fifty-four. It does not look muchdifferent from aircraft used today by airlines around the world.Later, a similar aircraft was given the numbers Seven-Oh-Seven. TheSeven-Oh-Seven was the first extremely successful passenger jetaircraft. It served as the first jet aircraft for many of theworld's passenger airlines. The Dash-Eighty looks very new, notfifty years old.

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VOICE ONE:

National Air and Space Museum officials say they expect aboutthree-million visitors a year to the new center. Many of thesevisitors will be school children. The center includes schoolroomsand will provide teachers with teaching materials.

One of the center's goals will be to educate the children of thefuture about the importance of aviation.

Smithsonian officials recognize that it is difficult for manypeople to visit either of these two flight museums. In the nearfuture, they hope to display photographs and information about allthe aircraft on the Internet.

You can already visit the museum if you have a computer that canlink with the Internet. The Internet address is WWW.NASM.SI.EDU. Orhave your computer search for the letters N-A-S-M.

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VOICE TWO:

This program was written by Paul Thompson and produced by MarioRitter.