Sometimes, Fantasy Flies
The Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum collection includes not only artifacts representing major milestones in aviation and aerospace, but artifacts of imagination paying tribute to how ideas and stories inspire the people who achieve such goals. They include the original Star Trek TV starship Enterprise (on display in the South Lobby of the Mall museum); the alien Mothership from Close Encounters of the Third Kind (on display in the Space Hangar at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center); and even the fantastical sculpture of La Minerve, a golden ship suspended under a balloon envisioned as a self-contained aerial community by Etienne Robert in 1803 and rendered into three- dimensional art by N.A. DiRaddo in the late 1970s based on an engraving done in 1820 (on display just inside the Early Flight gallery in the Mall museum).
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And they include *two* X-wing fighters from Star Wars: a full-scale physical model used on-screen in The Rise of Skywalker movie, and a smaller, SUV- sized X-wing model that was never in the movies but actually flew at the opening of the “Rise of the Resistance” experience at Galaxy’s Edge, the Star Wars world at Walt Disney World in Orlando, FL!
Poe Dameron’s X-wing – with its 37-foot wingspan! – has been hanging just outside the Planetarium since the west end of the museum on the Mall reopened on October 14, 2022. If you haven’t seen it yet, it’s definitely worth a visit; just get your free timed admission tickets from the museum website in advance of your trip. And don’t miss the signs for the X-wing! It’s the only artifact in the museum with two distinct signs. One is written in the real world (“This is a film prop”) while the other is written inside the world of Star Wars, as if it’s all real (Armaments! Engines! Poe Dameron flying it in battle!).
The flying X-wing is a much newer acquisition, now on display at the Udvar-Hazy Center (no tickets required!). To see it, head for the nose of the Concorde. You can get great views both from the ground and from the high catwalk above. It’s also a unique display, because its donation credit comes in two pieces: to Lucasfilm and Disney for the lightweight, mostly mesh, white and blue X- wing “costume,” painted to virtually glow when hit with UV spotlights, and to Boeing for the big flat- black cargo drone that enabled the costume to actually fly. Here’s a cute funny: for the X-wing to fly nose-forward, the drone had to fly sideways! Footage of the brief flight is readily available on YouTube; the Disney Live TV feed runs here. Fans enjoying the experience also posted their views; here is one showing the crowd reactions to seeing X-wings fly! Click here!
You never know what you’re going to find at the Air and Space Museum. Sometimes, it’s fantasy that flies … and ignites the imagination.
Mary Dominiak
