The Flight Deck

The idea of living and working in space has acted as inspiration for stories for thousands of years. Dr. Margaret Weitekamp is a curator and chair of the space history department at the Smithsonian National Air and...

If someone’s murdered on the International Space Station, what happens? Dr. Saadia Pekkanen is the founding director of the Space Law, Data, and Policy Program at the University of Washington, and is one of the global...

Yeah, dreaming of a thriving community in space is all fine and dandy. But have we really thought this through? Kelly Weinersmith is a biologist and popular science writer. She co-authored the book A City on Mars: Can...

The Mass Effect series set a new standard for science fiction storytelling. Part of its appeal was a grounding in real science. Mac Walters is the CEO of Worlds Untold, but before founding his own company he was a...

Space is trying to kill you. How can you make it feel like home? Sana Sharma is a co-founder and the Chief Design Officer for the Aurelia Institute, where she focuses on creating habitats in outer space that go beyond...

Sandwiches hit different at zero gravity. While at NASA, Vickie Kloeris managed the food systems for the Space Shuttle and later the International Space Station. She joins host Sean Mobley to chat about the weirdness...

Wendy Lawrence is a retired NASA astronaut and pilot for the United States Navy. She joined host Sean Mobley for a frank and honest conversation about resilience, finding community, and reflecting on her time in the...

LGBTQ+ people have been part of aviation and space science for centuries. Today’s episode is a bit of a departure from our normal format. Special guest Joalda Morancy rejoins host Sean Mobley to spotlight 10 individuals...

Museums are places where history is presented and interpreted, and presenting and interpreting the stories of LGBTQ+ people in aerospace brings with it unique challenges for the people doing the interpreting. Isaac...

Dr. Marques Redd and Mikael Owunna are Black, queer Pittsburgh-based multidisciplinary artists who weave indigenous African cosmic stories into their work. A recent film they directed, The Primordial House is an example...

Greg Sumner grew up fascinated by airplanes and managed to parlay that love of aviation into a career as a pilot, flying some of the most iconic aircraft out there for United Airlines. He also served as the co-chair of...

The history of the gay men who still make up an unusually large percentage of the flight attendant labor force is not well known. Associate Professor of History at Kansas State University Phil Tiemeyer covered this...

Author, astrophysicist and science communicator Joalda Morancy wrote their young readers book “Aliens: Join the Scientists Searching Space for Extraterrestrial Life” while they were still a college student at the...

There’s little about Dr. Margaret “Mom” Chung’s story that you can call ordinary. From her status as the first known Chinese American woman doctor, to her secret mission to recruit pilots for the American Volunteer...

Welcome to Season 3 of The Flight Deck! This season’s theme is LGBTQ+ aerospace history. We’ll be investigating the ways that LGBTQ+ people have been part of aviation and space exploration since the beginning, and also...

What a century! We recently visited the National Museum of the Untied States Air Force to get a close-up look at the Century Series aircraft on display there (F-100, F-101, F-102, F-104, F-105, F-106 and F-107). As a...

If you live in a rural area and don’t have access to a hospital, what do you do in a medical emergency? That’s where Life Flight comes in. Life Flight and other organizations like it use helicopters to whisk passengers...

Thousands of satellites are zooming over your head right now, orbiting Earth and beaming down research data, images, phone calls and even Internet access. Did you know that many of those satellites were made within a...

Each year, Seafair brings a spectacular air show to the skies above Seattle. The jewel of the show is the annual performance by the Blue Angels, the United States Navy’s demonstration team. This episode features a...

Welcome to Season 2 of The Flight Deck! From now on we’ll be presenting podcast episodes in themed seasons, letting us explore stories from aerospace in entirely new ways. This season is all about “Curator on the...

In the conclusion to a two-part series about the mysterious DB Cooper, this episode picks up the story from its cliffhanger ending in Part I, with Museum of Flight Docent Mike Burns sharing the events in the aftermath...

This episode comes out on the brink of a major anniversary here in Seattle. 50 years ago tomorrow, November 24, on the eve of Thanksgiving, a man known only as DB Cooper boarded a plane in Portland headed for Seattle...

If you’ve shopped in the Museum’s store, Lynda Eck may have helped you with your purchase. Before she started working here at the Museum, however, Lynda had a 35-year career flying with United on aircraft like the...

What’s it like to drift from planet to planet, exploring the universe? In today’s episode of The Flight Deck, you get to do just that. Host Sean Mobley invites you to take a break from the hustle and bustle for a few...

How does studying a giraffe help make a better space suit? Dr. Dava Newman is the current Director of the MIT Media Lab and served as a Deputy Administrator of NASA in the mid-2010s. She’s been with MIT’s School of...