the fun you'll have. Photo by Gordon Campbell-At Altitude Gallery
The modern gray building on Three Notch Road, with a striking wing-shaped roof that appears ready for take-off, is the Test and Evaluation Hall. Opened in 2016, it houses several aircraft including a T-38 Talon supersonic trainer, an X-35C demonstrator aircraft that helped Lockheed Martin win the prize of developing the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. The runner-up in that battle, Boeing’s X-32B, is displayed outside. Also on view is a restored cockpit from a Soviet MiG-21 fighter jet that was recovered from a scrap heap in East Germany. In a gallery highlighting naval aviation in space, Patuxent Rivertrained astronaut Jim Lovell (perhaps best known as the commander of the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission, and portrayed by Tom Hanks in the film of the same name) reminisces via video about the space program. A lunar rock that he personally donated to the museum is also on display. The Flight Technology Hall, the main museum’s former home, now houses U.S. Navy and Marine Corps aviation memorabilia and hundreds of model planes. Museum volunteers took advantage of the downtime created by COVID-19 closures to convert former storage rooms into new display galleries that focus on aircraft artifacts and how Patuxent River personnel have contributed to America’s defense. Because Pax River also hosts the Navy’s Propulsion System Evaluation Facility, dozens of aircraft engines are on display here. Inspired by all that horsepower, visitors can climb into the cockpit of an F-14 Mach Combat simulator, as I did, to try their hand at rocketing into the sky. Although the adjacent exhibits include a collection of aircrew ejection seats, fortunately for my fumbling time in the cockpit, the simulator is not so equipped. Outside, the Flight Line holds two dozen U.S. Navy and Marine Corps aircraft that appear poised for takeoff. When compared to most airplane
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