“Five hundred years from now, you’ll want to be able to pop open something on the aircraft and see how it worked,” noted David Hahn, acting collections manager for the Science Education Center in Richmond, Va. For the past 13 years Hahn has cared for N802L, the Model 23 Continental that was the first production aircraft from Lear Jet. Now N802L has come home, as a wave of artifacts arrive each day for reassembly at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, the annex to the National Air and Space Museum (NASM) at Washington Dulles Airport that will open December 15. The annex, more informally known simply as “Hazy,” will house 81 aircraft before opening ceremonies; and the roster will continue to grow.
NASM curator Dorothy Cochrane stood by to accept N802L, and while waiting she thumbed through the July issue of AIN. “I think the next Smithsonian artifact should be a Beechcraft Starship,” referring to the page one story detailing Raytheon’s decommissioning of the twin turboprop. Cochrane also hopes the airplanes at the annex will still be here in 500 years but, realistically, “we think more of a 100-year time frame. There’s not as much of a problem with corrosion of airframes as with things like spacesuits that have rubber parts.”
