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Man, the moon, and the planets, in Robert McCalls's sweeping mural in the museum's south lobby

passing near the carrier and watch fighter-bombers being launched from the deck. In another gallery you can visit a World War I forward airfield near Verdun, recreated down to the duckboards beneath your feet. 

The World War II exhibit is dominated by a dramatic life-sized mural of a B-17 bomber under attack from German fighters. In the exhibit are a Japanese Zero, a British Spitfire and a Messerschmitt Bf-109. A visitor from Los Angeles stared at the Messerschmitt. "I was a waist-gunner on a B-17," he said. "But I never saw one of these, except as a speck in the distance or as a blur diving past us." 

Altogether the Smithsonian has in its collection some 265 aircraft, of which 68 are on exhibit in the National Air and Space Museum. Another 57 are displayed eight miles away, at a museum adjunct in Suitland, Md., where the historic ships are restored and refurbished. The Smithsonian hopes eventually to display all the aircraft, moving some into temporary exhibits in the main building and lending others to museums around the country. 

Entering the Space Hall, one of the museum's main exhibit rooms, you find yourself in a forest of technology that reaches for the stars. Here, you can walk into the house-sized cylinder that is the Skylab Orbital Workshop (this is the actual backup vehicle)to see how astronauts live in space. You can also see the Jupiter-C and Vanguard launch vehicles and watch the operation of the gyroscopic guidance system of. Poseidon submarine-launched missile.

Elsewhere in the museum, you can visit the magnificent planetarium (a Bicentennial gift from the Federal Republic of Germany), where constellations, spacecraft and exploding supernovae are projected     

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