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Flight Lab: A new gallery at the Science Museum, London

‘It’s not a gimmick’, insists the curator-cum-entrepreneur responsible
for the Science Museum’s latest gallery of gadgets. Flight Lab, which opened
last week, is an educational experience, says Andrew Nahum, the museum’s
curator of aeronautics. The new gallery’s 24 ‘interactive’ exhibits are
there to be touched and toyed with, encouraging visitors to discover, among
other things, how a helicopter flies, what gives an aircraft lift and why
hot air balloons stay up.

Despite Britain’s pioneering pre-eminence in the field of aeronautics,
the museum has had to finance the new gallery without the support of British
aerospace companies, which were approached for assistance. The lack of funds
has constrained ambitions for Flight Lab, just as it has delayed refurbishment
of the renowned but distinctly drab Aeronautics gallery next door.

For example, the museum could not afford a flight simulator for Flight
Lab. Instead the new gallery offers a computer terminal in the style of
a video game to demonstrate how helicopters take off, change direction and
land – or crash and blow up.

A similarly sparse exhibit demonstrates aerodynamic lift. Air blown
over a cutaway wing section generates low pressure across the top of the
wing that sucks up lightweight, coloured balls through a transparent tube.
The exhibit is a remarkably inventive with a deceptively simple design,
but its message may seem obscure to someone trying to understand lift for
the first time, not least because the wing does not move at all.

It does, however, highlight Nahum’s dilemma. To get people into museums
these days, ‘interactive exhibits are almost obligatory’, he admits. Launch
Pad, the museum’s first modern interactive gallery that introduces principles
behind everyday technologies, is now the museum’s most popular attraction.

But the subtleties of aero-dynamics are ill-suited to interactive displays
that must be designed and built within a tight budget. Many good ideas for
Flight Lab were impossible to make or failed at the prototype stage, recalled
Nahum: ‘You don’t display what you want to show but what you can show.’

Ironically, the most unsubtle of the gallery’s aerodynamic demonstrations,
the hot air balloon, will not be an interactive exhibit in the strict sense.
Only museum staff will be allowed to manage its radio-controlled flights.

Flight Lab is designed to evoke ‘the heroic age of aeronautics . . .
when the metal-skinned airliner was born and civil aviation took off’, says
the blurb. With its curved and ribbed surfaces finished in aluminium, its
sensitive lighting and its soundproofed ceiling and floor that give the
look and feel of the inside of a Douglas DC 3, the new gallery seems like
a brash upstart with exciting toys next door to a fusty cousin with a cherished
aviation collection.

Traditionalists should not fear for the future of the older Aeronautics
gallery, however. It is to be updated but not changed in style, says Nahum:
the Spitfire and Messerschmitt that hang from its ceiling will continue
to do so for some time yet. And they should not be too snooty about the
new gallery. In a straw poll, a clutch of young visitors gave Flight Lab
unanimous endorsement.

Flight Lab is a permanent gallery. Access is free but restricted to
150 people at a time. The Science Museum Exhibition Road, London SW7 2DD,
is open daily; entrance fees vary. For more information, telephone 071 938
8111.