Wings Over the Rockies Air and Space Museum

 At the end of June, my husband and I, and a few friends, visited the The Wings Over the Rockies Air and Space Museum which is located on the former Lowry Air Force Base in Denver, Colorado. 

Transferred from the United States Air Force to a group of volunteers in 1994, Wings Over the Rockies Air & Space Museum is located in Hangar #1 of the former Lowry Air Force Base in eastern Denver, Colorado. Today, the museum boasts more than 182,000 square feet of hangar space full of iconic aircraft, space vehicles, artifacts, military uniforms, and much more. Visitors can also experience flight simulators, discover various educational programs and participate in dozens of exciting museum-sponsored events.   This was the second time my husband and I visited the museum--see my first post about it on this link.

It's such an interesting museum, filled with both permanent and temporary exhibits, and over 50 aircraft and space vehicles.

  

We all wanted to see the 45-minute National Geographic movie that plays every hour in the museum theater called "Living In the Age of Airplanes," narrated by Harrison Ford.  The movie trailer is above, or at this link.  It really is amazing to see how humankind's ability to fly has impacted the world in such a short time!  

This example of a Kitty Hawk Multicopter looks almost like a drone, but it was able to fly one person like a helicopter and was so light it did not require a pilot's license to fly! The company no longer makes them and now wants to focus on more powerful VTOL aircraft that can travel faster and farther and with more occupants. The company already has a new design in the works called the Heaviside.  The era of "flying cars" may soon become a reality!  How much more will that change our world?

There was also a special exhibit at the museum called "All the Cosmos a Canvas--Hubble Reveals Our Beautiful Universe," comprised of these amazing Hubble telescope photos...

...including this signed photo by Loren J. Shriver, the commander of the Space Shuttle Discovery (STS-31) which lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center, Cape Canaveral Florida, on a mission to place the Hubble Space Telescope in Earth Orbit in April 1990.

Actual Star Wars movie aircraft memorabilia is a big hit at the museum, especially for children.  R2D2 actually whistled at me--the rascal!

Do you remember hearing about "The Miracle on the Hudson" years ago? A commercial passenger jet lost all its engines to bird strikes when flying out of New York's LaGuardia Airport in 2009, and the pilot was able to glide the plane down and land in the Hudson River, saving 155 passengers' lives.  Fortunately, the pilot had learned to fly a glider at the US Air Force base when he was a cadet!

Before we left the museum we stopped a moment to reflect on this stirring sculpture called "Least We Forget The Mission" which honors the more than 88,000 US airmen who died in WWII.

 

Each year, Wings Over the Rockies welcomes roughly 160,000 visitors representing all 50 U.S. states and 28-countries around the world. We certainly enjoyed our visit!

What's new around here...

Thank you to everyone who commented on the book review in my last post. It was an interesting book that made me think quite a bit about my own collections and possessions.  I think we all agree that keeping things that bring us joy in our lives is not a problem, it is only a problem when we find they lead to stress or debt, or become an obsession that we focus on more than life experiences.

We had a very Happy 4th of July...

Our son's community has an annual mini-parade each 4th of July where the residents follow emergency vehicles around the neighborhood. They then host a buffet lunch in the park, have a water splash slide, and face painting for the children, and at night there are some firework displays. Thankfully we had beautiful weather that day and enjoyed it all.

I hope you are also having an enjoyable summer!

PS: A reminder to My Email Subscribers: beginning sometime in July 2021, the Blogger e-mail Feedburner subscription service will be turned off. Therefore, you will no longer receive emails when a new post is published at Mille Fiori Favoriti. I offer you the alternative of joining Bloglovin and subscribing to follow Mille Fiori Favoriti there. You will then receive emails when I publish a new post. Alternatively, you can also make a note of my blog's URL: https://millefiorifavoriti.blogspot.com
and then check weekly, usually on Mondays, for a new blog post. I hope you will use one of these alternatives. Thank you for reading my blog, published since 2007! I look forward to seeing all of you here at Mille Fiori Favoriti.

You can also find me on

Instagram Twitter Facebook 

Pinterest

I'm linking this post to some of the following blog events:

 Mosaic Monday, Blue Monday, Through My Lens Monday, Hearth, and Soul Link Party, You Are the Star Blog Hop, Inspire Me Monday, Home Matters Linky Party,  Good Random Fun, Nature Notes, Grand Social, Travel Photos, Travel Tuesday, Happiness Is Homemade, Create, Bake, Make, Our World Tuesday, Ruby Tuesday, Tuesdays With A Twist, Let's Keep In Touch, Wordless Wednesday on a Tuesday,  Party in Your PJ's, Wordless Wednesday, Oh My Heartsie Girl's Wonderful Wednesday, Wednesday My Corner of the World, Wonderful Wednesday,  Little Things Thursday, Thankful Thursday, Thursday Encouraging Hearts and Home,  Thursday Thinking Out Loud, Friday With Friends, Friendship Fridays, A Morning Cup of Joe, Friday Features Linky Party, Skywatch Friday, Pink Saturday, Saturday Sparks, Saturday Critters, Sunday on Silverado