 For a press preview of Destination Moon, a new exhibit is here at the Museum of Flight in Seattle for a few months, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission. Fun fact, I actually worked here at the Museum of Flight in college at the gift shop, and I get to come here as press, so that's awesome. Museum's public relations manager, honest to goodness aviation and space geek. So I am happy to say that all systems are nominal and go for the opening of Destination Moon, the Apollo 11 mission. To learn about the past, to be inspired by it, we will then help prepare them for it, and ultimately write those next chapters, or as Jeff Bezos says, to invent the future. There's one other reason why I think this exhibition is here. Neil Armstrong's sons were both here doing the emceeing and talking, and they asked Jeff, why did he want the exhibit here? And absolutely stealing his line, he said, if somebody asked you if you want to borrow the Apollo 11 capsule, you say yes. Destination Moon is an exhibition that celebrates that mission while providing context for the question, why didn't we go to the moon? The exhibition examines the birth of the American space program, and sheds light on some of the more than 400,000 people that worked through the trials, tragedies, and triumphs of the 20 missions across eight years that led up to Apollo 11. Those of us who work in museums are fortunate in that we are not burdened with making history. Instead, we get to be the keepers, the chroniclers, and the storytellers of the greatest of human achievements. You are cleared for TEI, that is trans-exhibit injection. This is it. This is the real thing. This thing went to the moon and back. I haven't been down to the Museum of Flight in full of history, full of inspiring stories. I'm going to enjoy my press pass. My name is Matt Hayes. I have the honor of saying I'm the president and CEO of the Museum of Flight here in Seattle, Washington. I started out as a volunteer here in 2000. I was restoring a B-17 World War II bomber. I did that for nine years working with vets and Rosie the Riveter's, and learned a lot more about life than I did about Ben and Chief Metal. I can tell you that. What else do you think people will need to see? There's some really human elements that I love here. We've got Neil Armstrong's sons let us borrow some things like the baritone that Neil used to play. What does it mean to be right here next to Boeing? I mean, the great thing about the Museum of Flight is it is right here where Boeing began. Oh, absolutely. We are a separate 501C3 institution, proud to be a not-for-profit of Boeing's obviously and our DNA. We have some of their most iconic aircraft, the first ones I built, and most people don't know the story of them in space and how they were very instrumental in helping make this moon mission successful. Thanks for having us, Matt. Absolutely. Nice to meet you. My name is Jeff Nunn. I am the adjunct curator for space history here at the Museum. Okay, so I actually had the pleasure of meeting Jeff like six or seven years ago. We gave a talk at a local bar. I was talking about data and data visualization and Jeff was talking about space and the museum. How does it feel to have this enormous exhibit here? It's incredible. It's, if you think about, okay, what are people going to remember a thousand years from now? Landing on the moon is probably what they're going to remember. So being able to be the host venue and involved in the project to host the 50th anniversary of the moon landing with the artifacts that came back from the moon is indescribable. Yes, it's incredible. What fraction of this exhibit is stuff from Museum of Flight? What fraction is Smithsonian? It's really pretty close to a 50-50. So most of the Apollo 11 artifacts are all from the Smithsonian, but we have a number of other artifacts from the Apollo program that came from the Museum of Flight and then also additional artifacts that have never before been seen here, which we started having folks whose parents worked on the Apollo program or they themselves worked on the Apollo program who started reaching out to us saying, hey, I've got this connection in this story, and it's incredible that we've been able to bring those stories, those very personal stories into the exhibit. Thanks a lot, man. It's good to see you again. Congratulations. Thank you very much. This is amazing. That's Buzz Aldrin's euphonium. I played euphonium in high school, too. Me and so many others that you see of the family is sitting on their couch gathering around their TV. I've loved that recreated that here. If you pause for a minute, you can appreciate just what this felt like, to sit down with your kids, sit down with your family. That is not much space for three people my size to spend an extended amount of time in. So my family lore is that my dad had an uncle who was an engineer and worked on this, played some small part in building the lunar module. One of the speakers this morning said that over 400,000 people across the country worked to help bring people to the moon and safely home back again. And I think a lot of families have that story, have that family story like mine. My name is Katrine Halpern. I'm the project director for Destination Moon, the Apollo 11 mission at the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service or SITES. Do you get nervous when we send the only Apollo 11 command module across the country or at this point are you totally chill with it? Yeah, there's no such thing as being chill with it. Just this morning as I was waking up I was having anxiety dreams about something having to do with the command module. It's a thrill and it's also an incredible amount of work with a very large team. The command module of Columbia is a national treasure and it is treated as such. And basically the answer of how we move it is very carefully. And that's really the only information that I can give you because everything else is kept secret. How long will it take when it gets back? Is there a re-restoration that goes back? Yes. Does it need to be fixed up after all this travel? It'll have some minor conservation done just to make sure that there's some additional cleaning just for checking that everything is okay. Columbia will then be on view in a brand new gallery that's opening in 2022 and it won't be leaving anytime soon again. So this is really a once in a lifetime opportunity to have it traveling around the country. You can see that with the medical kit there are multiple pages with pockets. Each pocket is labeled with the particular medicine treatment. You'll see that the bottom edge is rather ragged. And the reason for that is in the vacuum of space the kit actually expanded and so to get it back into its little cubby hole they had to actually make a slash in order to compress the kit enough to put it back into its cubby hole. You'll notice that there are a couple empty pockets not because those medicines were used during the mission but there are a number of items that are class narcotics and so rather than traveling with them as part of the exhibition they are safely secured in a vault in Washington DC. Something you're not going to get when it's back in DC and when you wouldn't have gotten if you've seen it in DC is this feeling of texture. All the little details on the module that's so much more human and tangible when it's just sitting right here. The thing is like three feet away from you right now. It's unbelievable. Well that's it for me with the behind the scenes look at the Destination Moon exhibit. You have to go see it if you're in town. It opens up in just a couple days. So get down to the museum and fly down by Boeing Field. It is spectacular. Of course, visiting the museum I've got to get a couple things together.