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Beyond the Limits: Flight Enters the Computer Age

May 12, 1989 - May 23, 2011

Museum: Air and Space Museum

Location: Gallery 213, 2nd Floor, East Wing

The gallery illustrates how the electronic computer has revolutionized aerospace engineering, aviation, and spaceflight. Computers are used to design and build air- and spacecraft, monitor air traffic, navigate and control flights, and train pilots.

The exhibition is divided into 7 areas:

• Design
• Aerodynamics
• Computer-Aided Manufacture
• Flight Testing
• Air Operations
• Flight Simulators
• Space Operators

Highlights include:

• X-29: forward-swept-wing airplane (full-scale model)
• Cray-1 supercomputer: once the world's fastest computer
• Interactive computers: Visitors can test their skills at designing the wing of a jet airplane, guiding a lunar landing safely to the moon's surface, and landing an airplane at a busy airport in New York.
• HiMAT: robot airplane that pioneered the use of fly-by-wire technology, in which a computer -- not the pilot -- controls the aircraft's flaps, rudder, and ailerons
• Minuteman III ICBM Guidance and Control System: the brain of the Minuteman missile, the standard U.S. land-based intercontinental ballistic missile
• Full-size space shuttle cockpit simulator
• A non-flown flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder (black box) used to determine the cause of aircraft accidents

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