Above and Beyond simulation
London visitor Letu Yang helps his 4-year-old son, Rafael Yang, fly a custom-built jet through a “Full Throttle” simulation at the “Above and Beyond” exhibit at the Museum of Flight. (GeekWire photo by Alan Boyle)

Most of the floor space at Seattle’s Museum of Flight is set aside to celebrate past glories of aerospace – but “Above and Beyond,” a traveling exhibition that opens this weekend, is different: It’s all about what lies ahead.

During a Thursday preview, schoolkids thronged to watch a wraparound video about the future of flight, play big-screen video games, get their selfies taken on a virtual Mars and check out exhibits about drones, 3-D printing and next-generation spacecraft.

The Boeing Co. is presenting the interactive exhibition as part of this year’s centennial celebration, but “Above and Beyond” goes far beyond the story of the company’s first 100 years.

“It doesn’t just concentrate on what Boeing has done. It concentrates on the future,” Doug King, the Museum of Flight’s president and CEO, said as he watched teens and tweens swarm past. “And these are the people who are going to create that future.”

The exhibition has already been at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. That means the producers at Texas-based Evergreen Exhibitions already have a pretty good idea which attractions will be the most popular. Here are the top five, as listed by Mike Kempf, Evergreen Exhibitions’ vice president of marketing:

1. Full Throttle: You design your own virtual fighter jet, based on aerodynamic principles, and then sit down to fly it on cockpit simulators. Boeing test pilot Mike Bryan says it’s his favorite. “It looks like a flight deck, and the plane looks like a fighter,” he told GeekWire as he watched players race their jets.

Full Throttle
Boeing test pilot Mike Bryan watches a boy pilot his virtual jet. (Credit: Ted Huetter / Museum of Flight)

2. Spread Your Wings: Stand in front of a giant screen and match your movements with virtual birds with the aid of Microsoft’s Kinect motion-sensing technology. To fly right, you have to flap your arms and lean your body like the birds do. When your turn ends, the big screen flashes a selfie of you and the rest of your flock.

Spread Your Wings
“Spread Your Wings” shows you how to fly like a bird. (Credit: Ted Huetter / Museum of Flight)

3. Elevator to Space: Press the start button, and a video screen shows you what you’d see during a space elevator ride to a height of 22,000 miles. Along the way, a computerized guide points out various flying machines from the future, and explains what it’s like to pass through the Van Allen radiation belts. (Don’t worry: It’s safe.)

4. Marathon to Mars: This interactive augmented-reality experience shows you the challenges that astronauts will have to face during a fanciful journey to the Red Planet, ranging from suspended animation to muscle wasting in zero-G. At the end of the tutorial, you get your picture taken for your “passport to Mars.”

Marathon to Mars
A museumgoer interacts with her mirror image in the “Marathon to Mars” booth. (Credit: Ted Huetter / Museum of Flight)

5. Space Junk: Take your place at a console that lets you zap orbital debris as it passes through your quadrant of outer space. Up to three players can compete against each other in a video game that also teaches you about the threat that’s posed by space junk.

The exhibition opens Saturday, and to mark the occasion, the museum is bringing in former space shuttle astronaut Tom Jones to talk about living in space at 2 p.m. Jones will also answer visitors’ questions and sign copies of his latest book, “Ask the Astronaut.”

“Above and Beyond: The Ultimate Interactive Flight Exhibition” will be at the Museum of Flight through Sept. 10.

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