Air Zoo

Air Zoo

The Air Zoo is different – a mixture of many classic planes, children rides, some air simulators, and the space program outside of Kalamazoo, Michigan. With the exception of an SR-71, most of the planes we’ve seen in other museums, though they do have a good collection of World War II planes and trainers. They had the story of Guadalcanal and another on the WASPs. I hadn’t realized that the women aviators only had a 3 year history during the war. The simulators tossed the participants around quite a bit, so we didn’t try them. The space sections was fairly meager, yet we spent about 3 hours here because of their temporary exhibit, Popnology. This exhibit shows how the vision of men (Jules Vern and other science fiction writers as well as inventors) and popular culture (movies, books, TV and Art) have influenced modern technology.  For example, the wrist radio of Dick Tracy or communicator of Star Trek have become the cell phones of today. There was also a great section on fictional and real robots, and how the movie industry has used technology to create the special effects we see today. Then there was a section on 3D printing and its use in making prosthetics.  This temporary exhibit made the museum. 

Curtiss P-40N painted for Libyan desert