Музей полёта: История авиации и космонавтики Сиэтла

The Museum of Flight is a private non profit air and space museum in the Seattle metropolitan area. It is located at the southern end of King County International Airport (Boeing Field) in the city of Tukwila, immediately south of Seattle. It was established in 1965 and is fully accredited by the American Alliance of Museums. As the largest private air and space museum in the world, it also hosts large K–12 educational programs. The museum attracts over 500,000 visitors every year, and also serves more than 140,000 students annually through its onsite programs: a Challenger Learning Center, an Aviation Learning Center, and a summer camp (ACE), as well as outreach programs that travel throughout Washington and Oregon.

The Museum of Flight can trace its roots back to the Pacific Northwest Aviation Historical Foundation, which was founded in 1965 to recover and restore a 1929 Boeing 80A 1, which had been discovered in Anchorage, Alaska. The restoration took place over a 16 year period, and after completion, was put on display as a centerpiece for the museum. In 1968, the name "Museum of Flight" first appeared in use in a facility, rented at the Seattle Center. Planning began at this time for a more permanent structure, and preliminary concepts were drafted. Fundraising was slow in the late 1970s, and after restoration, the two story Red Barn was opened to the public in 1983. That year a funding campaign was launched, so capital could be raised for construction of the T. A. Wilson Great Gallery. In 1987, Vice President George Bush, joined by four Mercury astronauts, cut the ribbon to open the facility on July 10, with an expansive volume of The gallery's structure is built in a space frame lattice structure and holds more than 20 hanging aircraft, including a Douglas DC 3 weighing more than nine tons. The museum's education programs grew significantly with the building of a Challenger Learning Center in 1992. This interactive exhibit allows students to experience a Space Shuttle mission. It includes a mock up NASA mission control, and experiments from all areas of space research. Completed in 1994, the 132 seat Wings Cafe and the 250 seat Skyline multipurpose banquet and meeting room increased the museum's footprint to At the same time, one of the museum's most widely recognized and popular artifacts, the Lockheed M 21, a modified Lockheed A 12 Oxcart designed to carry the Lockheed D 21 reconnaissance drones, was placed on the floor at the center of the Great Gallery, after being fully restored. The first jet powered Air Force One (1959–1962, SAM 970), a Boeing VC 137B, was flown to Boeing Field in 1996; it arrived in June and was opened to visitors in October. Retired from active service earlier that year, North of the Red Barn, the wing has of exhibit space on two floors, with more than 25 World War I and World War II aircraft. It also has large collection of model aircraft, including every plane from both wars. Many of these aircraft were from the collection of the Champlin Fighter Museum, formerly in Mesa, Arizona, which closed in 2003. The wing opened on June 6, the sixtieth anniversary of D Day. The new building includes multisensory exhibits that emphasize stories from the visionaries, designers, pilots, and crews of the Space Shuttle and other space related missions. The gallery opened to the public in November 2012. Though the museum did not receive one of the four remaining Shuttles, it did receive the Full Fuselage Trainer (FFT), a Shuttle mockup that was used to train all Space Shuttle astronauts. During the 50th anniversary celebrations for Apollo 11 in 2019, the Museum of Flight hosted a traveling Smithsonian exhibit with the Apollo Command module Columbia, which was used during the first Moon landing.

On its grounds is the Personal Courage Wing (PCW) with 28 World War I and World War II aircraft from several countries including Germany, Russia, and Japan. There is also the "Red Barn", a registered historic site also known as Building No. 105. Built in 1909, the building was used during the early 1900s as Boeing's original manufacturing plant. Through photographs, film, oral histories, and restoration of work stations the exhibits in the Red Barn illustrate how wooden aircraft structure with fabric overlays were manufactured in the early years of aviation and provides a history of aviation development through 1958. In June 2007 the museum opened a new space exhibit: "Space: Exploring the New Frontier", which traces the evolution of space flight from the times of Robert Goddard to the present and into future commercial spaceflight.

The museum maintains a restoration facility at Paine Field in Everett with about 39 ongoing projects including a de Havilland Comet 4 jet airliner, a Jetstar, and the Boeing 2707 mockup, among many.

The Harl V. Brackin Library at the Museum of Flight was founded in 1985. As of 2011, it contains 66,000 books and subscribes to 100 periodicals. It specializes in aerospace and aviation. There is also an online catalog. The Museum of Flight Archives is accessible to the public via the Kenneth H. Dalhberg Aviation Research Center. It includes millions of photographs and thousands of linear feet of manuscript materials. Highlights of the collections include the Gordon S. Williams photographic collection, the Peter M. Bowers Photographic Collection, the David D. Hatfield Aviation History Collection, the Norm Taylor Photographic Collection, the Elrey B. Jeppesen Aviation History and Navigation Collection, the American Fighter Aces Association Archives, the Lear Corporation Archives, and the Wright Airplane Company Collection. In December 2017, the Archives launched a digital repository. The site features digitized materials from archival, library, and artifact collections. In April 2019 the Archives began to make archival collections available and searchable online.

In September 2013, Raisbeck Aviation High School (formerly Aviation High School) opened in a new facility directly north of the museum's Airpark. The school is operated by Highline Public Schools as a STEM school with a focus on aviation. The school operates in partnership with the museum (which owns the land), Boeing, and other members of the local aviation industry. The facility will also be used for the museum's summer education programs when school is not in session. The new Aviation Pavilion spans the gap between the high school and the Space Gallery. The cover allows aircraft which were seasonally brought out, such as the museum's Boeing B 17 Flying Fortress and Boeing B 29 Superfortress, to be put permanently on display. The Pavilion, constructed as part of the museum's comprehensive "Inspiration Begins Here!" campaign, opened to the public in June 2016 and contains 18 of the museum's most iconic aircraft. The 140,000 square foot building doubles the museum's exhibit space, and was built with help from Sellen Construction and Seneca Real Estate Development. In late May 2019, the museum opened the featuring the fully restored B 52 Midnight Express as the culmination of Project Welcome Home. The park is free to the public.