HISTORY ON THE FLY

PRESERVING OUR MOMENTOUS ACHIEVEMENTS

What drives humanity to advancements and development is curiosity. Humans are curious about everything, from the birds in the sky to the stars thousands of light-years away. And it was curiosity that took me about an hour’s drive southwest of Portland recently.

The Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum stands in McMinnville, Oregon, and is divided into two main buildings. One is the aviation center, with the famous Spruce Goose as the centerpiece, and the other one is the space flight center with all the stuff that relates to humans’ history of exploring outside of Earth.
Each half of the place offers plenty to think about.

My first impression of this place was its sheer size. To put it simply, it’s quite large and magnificent, as the first thing that caught my eye was an enormous airplane, the “Spruce Goose” – a unique, all-wood “flying boat” built by business tycoon/avaitor Howard Hughes and only flown exactly once, in 1947.

(To be honest, I’m not that interested in airplanes. But if you’re different from me, each aircraft model on display has a descriptive plaque including its name and history, which I should have read instead of just gazing at them.)

The first building is used to display the most iconic aircraft models throughout history, aiming to portray an objective view of aviation history. These range from the very first versions of airplanes that actually took flight, marking the beginning of a new era for humanity – the era of conquering the skies – to the fighter jets that once were symbols of both power and fear.

Once the blue skies were conquered and humanity seemed to surpass the birds, we allowed our curiosity to reach further, beyond the Earth’s atmosphere, towards something more distant, grand, and mysterious.
And so the era of conquering space is honored in the second building, opposite the first.

Mankind has now ventured into the cosmos, filled with questions awaiting discovery, beginning with various unmanned satellites and advancing to landing on the moon. From initially sending things on the moon, we for the first time sent humans there and thus began humanity’s foray beyond Earth and into space.

All these achievements were influenced and controlled by the competition between the two superpowers of the time (the Soviet Union and the U.S.), in the intense space race that lasted nearly five decades.

To re-create key steps in that race and in conquering our corner of the universe, the building is arranged into what I could call the “walkway of history.” If you keep walking along to the rocket ship, there will be a room for you to experience the feeling of standing in the Mission Control room during the countdown before the Apollo 11 spacecraft carried Neil Armstrong to the moon, in 1969.

Though it is hard to say that all the things the museum tells us are completely true or not, I can say these flying machines are an actual part of the aerospace history and have had a ginormous impact on the historical progression of humanity.

It must be acknowledged that this place has done a very good job of bringing those advancements to life. However, are these displays sufficient, are they entirely the truth, or just stories recorded by the victors of history?

That depends on you and your viewpoint.

Thien Trieu Tran