Boeing Milestones of Flight Hall - The Bell X-1 and Friends
A stop on Washington DC National Mall Walking Tour, a free self-guided tour.
Walk in from the Mall and you are in the Boeing Milestones of Flight Hall, gallery 100 on the first floor, a soaring space filled with machines that each changed what people thought was possible.
In the center hangs the orange Bell X-1, Glamorous Glennis, which Chuck Yeager flew faster than the speed of sound on October 14, 1947. Nearby are the black X-15 rocket plane, which reached the edge of space in the 1960s, and SpaceShipOne, which in 2004 became the first privately built crewed craft to reach space.
On the floor, look for John Glenn's tiny Friendship 7 capsule, in which he became the first American to orbit the Earth in 1962. A test lunar module and a Telstar communications satellite are here too.
Next, go to the west end of the first floor for the Wright brothers.
More on Wikipedia: Bell X-1 · Chuck Yeager · SpaceShipOne
Stops on this tour
- Washington Monument
- National Museum of African American History and Cu
- National Museum of American History
- Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History
- National Gallery of Art
- United States Capitol
- United States Botanic Garden
- National Museum of the American Indian
- National Air and Space Museum
- Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
- The Smithsonian Institution Building - The Castle
- Freer Gallery of Art
- Jefferson Memorial
- World War II Memorial
- Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial
- Korean War Memorial
- Lincoln Memorial
- Vietnam Veterans Memorial
- White House Ellipse
- White House
- Lafayette Square