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1978   AMERICA'S OUT-OF-THIS-WORLD MUSEUM

sphere. Looming above it is the X-15, the rocket- powered plane that flew more than six times the speed of sound.

And nearby is the Apollo 11 command module that Michael Collins (the museum's director from its inception until he was named undersecretary  of the Smithsonian last April) orbited around the moon as Neil Armstrong took that "giant leap for mankind" in 1969.

In the air-transport gallery, a highly polished Douglas DC-3 "flies" in close formation with a Boeing 247 (forerunner of the modern airliner), a sleek Northrop Alpha, and a rugged Ford Tri-motor, the beloved "Tin Goose" of the 1920s. You can take an escalator to the second level to get a closer view of these pioneer airliners, which hang suspended by steel cables.

Farther along, in the gallery of special exhibits, is the scarlet Lockheed Vega in which Amelia Earhart, in 1932, became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic. And in another display area is Howard Hughes's remarkable H-1, one of the most beautifully designed planes ever built. In 1935, he flew it to establish a new world landplane record of 352 m.p.h.

One of the museum's most technically sophisticated displayed is a reconstruction of the hangar and flight-control decks of an aircraft carrier. Through film simulation, you can see ships of the escort force

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In the World War I exhibit, an American Spad V11 does a "victory roll" as it passes over a German Fokker D-V11

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