Museum-at-a-Glance: The California ScienCenter

To get to know museums a little better, I visited the Air and Space Exhibit at the California ScienCenter, conveniently located right across Exposition Boulevard from USC.

Right from the start, the visitor is given a sense of awe by the early Boeing 707 parked out front. Walking in through the unimposing entrance, one can catch a glimpse of the exhibits inside, a sort of teaser intended to pique interest. The museum is divided into sections: One for military aircraft, one for satellites, one for manned spacecraft, one for the history of flight, and one devoted to aerodynamics.

The museum offers an informative combination of short videos, diagrams, hands-on demonstrations, scale models, and historical artifacts (the one I found most striking was the actual Gemini 11 capsule displayed on the ground floor). These take the visitor to a distant star or show them how air flows over a wing, or show them how flight has developed over time.

Personally, I have always been fascinated with flight and space exploration, so this is the kind of museum that I wouldn't need much prompting to visit. The museum is good at attracting all sorts of different crowds even without being advertised very heavily; it has points of interest to all age groups and is free, so cost is not a restriction, and operates bilingually. The only drawback to the museum is its size -- if it were bigger, it might take longer than the 90 minutes I took (and I toured at a rather slow pace, I thought) to visit everything and appreciate the details.