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AirSpace Presents: 50 Years of Air + Space
Jul 23, 2026
50 Years of Air + Space: New Ideas
As the National Air and Space Museum built its collection and its identity, it also needed to find its footing as a place for science and research. In the third episode of our four-part limited series 50 Years of Air + Space, we’re exploring the history of scholarship at the Museum. We’ll dive into early debates over what type of research this new Museum would do and what type of academics would be a part of the team. We also hear the stories of how we came to host the Center for Earth and Planetary Studies, and how the study of the history and culture of aerospace became core to our mission.
In This Episode: 

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AirSpace is created by the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum with generous support from Lockheed Martin.
50 Years of Air + Space Episode 3: New Ideas
Read the transcript as a PDF.
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Dr Matt Shindell (Narr): From the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum this is 50 Years of Air + Space sponsored by Lockheed Martin, I’m Matt. To celebrate the museum building’s 50th anniversary we’re going back in time and behind the scenes to tell you our origin story.
From a collection, to a law, a building, all the science and scholarship, and the dedicated people that brought one of the world’s most popular Museums to life and have now transformed it for new generations. We have two more episodes to tell you all about it. Let’s get started.
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Matt (Narr): Science and History research have been part of the Smithsonian Institution from the very beginning. James Smithson’s will–which created and provided base funding for the Smithsonian in 1846 stated the Institution would be “an establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge.”
In the early years of the Smithsonian that research was mostly in the fields of natural history, biology, geology, anthropology… but as we mentioned in the last episode, aeronautics research started at the Smithsonian in the 1860s. First with balloons, then with powered aircraft, and eventually with rockets.
The National Air Museum was authorized by Congress in 1946, 100 years after the Smithsonian was founded. By the time the Museum actually opened in Washington D.C. 30 years later, science and scholarship was baked in.
One of the ways the National Air and Space Museum increases and diffuses knowledge is through a team of scientists working in the Center for Earth and Planetary Studies or CEPS. 
Ted:  Well, CEPS got started in, in about 1973 when Mike Collins became director of the museum…
Matt (Narr): That’s Dr Ted Maxwell, 
Ted:  I’m a geologist, formerly with the Smithsonian, formerly chair of the Center for Earth and Planetary Studies, formerly associate director, formally retired. 
Ted: …and Mike wanted to increase the breadth of the museum to include science as well as history. So he, he invited Farouk El-Baz, who had been with Bellcom, um, who had a contract with NASA on many things Apollo, uh, to come over and start a research department. So Farouk came to the museum and started a department with, oh, I don’t know, three or four people, and it was primarily to do post-Apollo science, to look at the images that were brought back from Apollo, the scientific data, and such things. And he named it the Center for Earth and Planetary Studies 
Matt (Narr): The Smithsonian secretary at the time, S. Dillon Ripley, wanted the new museum to expand the types of science done at the Smithsonian. He told Museum Director Michael Collins to create a robust research department. Collins got in touch with his old Apollo colleague Dr Farouk El-Baz, who named the department and hired its first employees, including Ted. 
Dr Mike Neufeld, retired senior curator and Smithsonian historian, remembers the founding of CEPS.
Mike: And at the same time, of course, the Smithsonian had always been a science research institution, dominated mostly by the biological sciences. We also had SAO up in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. And so why is Air and Space, can it also do some science research? And getting the, you know, the Bellcomm group under Farouk El-Baz certainly gave us kind of an, an instant science department. 
Matt (Narr): According to Farouk, Michael Collins was lamenting about how to create this research department to fellow Apollo astronaut Stu Roosa. Farouk remembered the conversation in a 2009 interview for the NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project. 
Farouk: There was a function where Stu Roosa and Michael Collins were together, and Michael Collins was telling Stu Roosa that he’s just accepted to be director of the Air and Space Museum. “They even want me to do scientific research there, and I don‘t know what the hell do they mean by that.”
So Stu Roosa said, “Well, call Farouk.” laughs
Michael Collins calls me up, and he said, “I‘m going to be the director of the Air and Space Museum, and they said that they want me to start doing that. I think that you should come and do this thing for me. I know I‘m not going to understand half of what you say, but I know that you‘re going to do a good job. Why don‘t you come and do whatever the hell you want to do?”
I left Bellcomm in December ‘72. I moved across the street to the Smithsonian on January 1, to start something that we called the Center for Earth and Planetary Studies as part of the National Air and Space Museum as part of the Smithsonian. I was there for ten years. 
Matt (Narr): Farouk came to the Museum straight from working on the Apollo program, and he remained really well connected with the scientists, engineers and astronauts of NASA.
Ted:  When I first met him in 1974, I guess it was…at the time, CEPS was in one of the towers at the A&I building, Arts and Industries building, and you had to go up a spiral staircase. Well, you’d go up a spiral staircase, and there would be these Smithy research assistants hanging out, and then Farouk in the big office, and then here comes this guy in striped pants and a flowered shirt, and, “Uh, who the hell is that?” “That’s Deke Slayton.” Yeah, the astronauts, I mean, they just came in to see him when they were in town over at NASA, which headquarters was a- right across the street. So i- it was just an exciting time. I mean, you know, for me, a, a graduate student, wet behind the ears. 
Matt (Narr): A lot of the research CEPS did in the beginning was work on the data that came from the Apollo missions.
Ted:  In 1973, it was the end of, uh… well, right after the end of Apollo 17, the last lunar mission. But the data were just incredible. And I had been involved in a, in an experiment on Apollo 1 7, uh, um, for my graduate work, which is where I met Farouk. 
But the, uh, in the department, it was primarily the, um, a NASA grant to study Apollo results. One of the other big things was l- something called lunar nomenclature. They… actually, in CEPS, under Farouk, they kept track of names of craters and had to update that every few months because new things were being discovered. But the Apollo results were, uh, just incredible.
Matt (Narr): Farouk named it the Center for Earth and Planetary Studies on purpose, the department also does work with Earth science and remote sensing–studying the planet we all live on.
 Matt: Did, did Farouk El-Baz came up– he came up with the name Center for Earth and Planetary Studies? 
Ted: Yes, he did. 
Matt: Yeah. 
Ted: Because he was also interested in remote sensing, so, uh, any kind of Earth-looking satellites.
Matt (Narr): Much of the work started in the early 70s is still being done in CEPS today. And often space exploration projects like landers, rovers, telescopes, satellites and imaging will have someone from CEPS working on them or working with the data they collect.
Ted:  I think it’s fair to say that CEPS has been both  a leader in some respects of the planetary community, and also a really well-respected member. We have folks nowadays who are, uh, choosing sites on Mars for future landings as well as on the Moon. So yes, I think we’re, um, we’re up there with the best of them. 
Matt (Narr): CEPS is doing active and varied research still today. W e spoke to some of the department’s current scientists about their research.
 Amanda: My name is Dr. Amanda Rudolph. I am a postdoctoral research geologist here in CEPS.  My research focuses on the geology of the Martian surface, and I study that through remote sensing techniques and field work, as well as helping with rover operations on the surface for the Curiosity rover. 
 Santa Lucia: My name is Santa Lucia Perez. I’m a graduate student at Purdue University. I mostly work on studying surface processes on the Moon through radar, and also on icy worlds, um, mostly using remote sensing data sets to understand how the surface of rocky and icy bodies change through time. 
 Tim: My name’s Tim Henderson. I am a physical science technician here and I’m studying terrestrial analog sites. So which places on Earth have the similar geologic processes similar to other planetary bodies, like the Moon or Mars.
Matt (Narr): In addition to their research areas, the scientists of CEPS also work on exhibits and curate some artifacts, like the lunar touch rock. They write blog posts and go on podcasts and TV shows to explain their research and artifacts to the general public. And go to conferences and write papers that appear in scientific journals.
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Matt (Narr): CEPS isn’t the only department within the National Air and Space Museum doing research.
In the late 1960s and early 70s the Smithsonian at large was building an emphasis on academic history research. The newly created History and Technology museum–what would eventually be called the National Museum of American History — was doing quite a bit of research on the history of technology. But in its early history the National Air and Space Museum was not. This is Mike Neufeld again
Mike:  From the standpoint of Ripley and the, and the, and, and, and his closest administrators, I mean, Air and Space has always sort of vi- vacillated back and forth between the history and art side and the science side of the Smithsonian, and sometimes we’d be in one, one category, and sometimes we’d be in the other. But, but Ripley and his, his subordinates, you know, all had this emphasis, Smithsonian is an academic institution as well as, as, as, as, as a museum, and where’s your research? 
Matt (Narr): The staff working for Air and Space in those days tended to be former military aviators, aerospace insiders and other people who worked in the industry before coming to the museum.
Some of them were doing some research and publishing papers in those early years, but it tended to be narrowly focused.
 Mike: There’d been a little bit of it, um, in, in the past, but it was always very narrow and very concerned with s- the small details. I mean, uh, I saw s- a, a s- a Castle document from I think about ’70, ’71. It described the Air and Space Museum curators as a bunch of antiquarians. You know, in other words, they would publish these little articles about these airplanes and the specific details, but there was not really any larger academic concern there. 
Matt (Narr): Smithsonian leadership wanted to see curators at the new National Air and Space Museum do original research. Research that would push fields forward and also contribute to new exhibitions for the public. This is curator emeritus Dr Tom Crouch,
Tom:  The Smithsonian had not been particularly, um, enthusiastic about a National Air and Space Museum. Um, Ripley, if you look at the records, um, really pushed Mike. He was afraid that it was gonna remain what it was, which was mostly old-timers. Mm-hmm. People like Fred, who came out of the rocket industry, or like Lou Purnell, who had been in aviation forever, or, you know, all, everybody basically, except the three or four newcomers, um, had all come out of the industry in one way or another, and that worried Ripley. He pushed Mike really hard, and I’m sure that’s why he hired me. Mm. And Dick and Paul Hanley, too. They wanted to have something there after the museum opened that wasn’t just the old boy, golly gee, kick the tires and light the fires kind of thing. 
Matt (Narr): In the 60s and 70s being an aviation historian was not particularly well respected and being a space historian, well, that barely even existed 
Mike:  There was a growing interest in the history of technology community in the ’60s. So you see that in the journal Technology and Culture. In, in, in getting some early, uh, academic interest going in the history of aviation and space flight as history of technology. But there just weren’t very many people doing it. 
And I think even when I started getting into this, when I sort of converted from a labor historian to a, to a rocket and s- missile space historian in the ’80s, there was still lingering contempt in academia for it. It’s a pop topic. It’s a lightweight topic, you know? Anybody who does air and space history is not a serious historian. 
Matt (Narr): But the Air and Space Museum decided to hire historians to staff the departments of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
As we mentioned in episode one, the planned galleries were different from other museums of the time. The goal was to present the history in a way that told the stories of events and taught visitors about the people who made history.
In order to do that, the museum needed more historians to curate those first galleries, imagine new exhibits, and continue to do scholarly research
Mike: There were hardly any academic historians of aviation and space flight. I mean, it was not a, an, a, uh, uh, almost … not treated as a very respectable occupation for hi- historians, for that matter. Uh, and, um, you know, if there was a professional history it was in the military history branches of, uh, of the, of, of the services and not anywhere else. So, so yeah, it was just in the age of the ’70s where you start to get some people who were actually writing PhDs in a- in aviation and space history became available. And Congress was increasing our appropriation because we said, “Look, we have to staff up.” We can’t, you know, we need a bigger staff to run a bigger museum. We need the money for collecting, we need the money for curation, so we gotta increase the size of the staff. So, so began hiring a few people who had some academic training. 
Matt (Narr): The PhD historians hired at this time weren’t the first hired at the museum but the attitude from the top of the Smithsonian was that they were needed to provide a depth that wasn’t there, or at least wasn’t respected before.
Tom:  People misunderstand, um, the role of PhDs in that building. They really think that Hallion and me and Paul Hanley were the first, but we weren’t. In the generation before us, in the ’60s, um, people like Russ Parkinson and, um, Dick Smith, PhDs, really good guys whose books we still use and so on and so forth. 
The difference was that, um, given the atmosphere in the NASM then in the ’60s, um, there was just nothing, there was nothing for them. They were fish out of water. Whereas when the three of us came, we came because they wanted us. They wanted to move in that direction. And, uh, so it was a different world, but yeah, there are other people whose deserve to be remembered and aren’t often enough. 
Matt (Narr): The addition of more academic historians was not always comfortable to those who were already working at the museum. There were those who felt that highly-educated curators and staff were interlopers in a kind of insiders club. 
Mike:  I think the attitude obviously was, uh, uh, it was a culture shift, and it was not comfortable for some time because you had this older, uh, community of, uh, curators as basically ex-aviation and space professionals. And, and this newer culture g- gradually came in of, of academic study of the history of aviation and space, as well as on the science side, the creation of, of CEPS. So you have this academicization, if that’s a word, of the Air and Space Museum, but it’s uncomfortable because indeed many people said, you know, “How many of these eggheads do we need? How many academics do we need?” I mean, “why do we need another PhD? We already have one.” 
Matt (Narr): Eventually the departments of Aeronautics and Astronautics, which is now the department of Space History, became home to professional historians who are sought out as experts in their fields. 
And with each hire the expertise of the museum grew and shifted, here’s Curator Dr Cathy Lewis
Cathy:  They were very excited to have something behind the galleries, um, in terms of, of, um, curatorial expertise and I came in as sort of that, that, at that second wave of hires, um, behind, you know, those people who had been hired to put research behind the exhibits and our, our public presentation, um, at the museum. And I think that was just the beginning. There was a notion of, of activity and construction. We weren’t going to dedicate ourselves to that old school of y- of, you know, lining up widgets side by side and showing the, you know, the ele- evolution of widgets. 
We were telling, um, more intimate stories than replicating that. So it’s, it’s a question of, you know, cart before the horse. Did the, uh, the idea of developing our research capabilities come first, or did the idea of changing museum presentations to a more interactive, intimate experience come first, or did they evolve side by side? 
Matt (Narr):  I’m one of those historians. I’m a member of the Space History Department today, and you can see historians of all kinds in our department, cultural historians, political historians, historians of technology, and historians of science like myself. 
We are all responsible for different parts of the collection, and together we’re able to tell very complete and holistic stories about the history of space science and exploration. And in the Aeronautics Department, they have a similarly robust department that tells the history of aviation. 
In addition to the research that we do and the galleries that we curate, you’ll often find our names cited and ourselves quoted in any news article that you might read about something that’s just happened in aviation or space flight
Mike: I think the fact that the Air and Space Museum created this cadre of historians all together in one place sort of gelled mostly by the ’80s, that, that, that it created a basis for aviation and space history in the United States on a larger scale. 
‘Cause, you know, outside of the Air and Space Museum, you get one person maybe in a history department that was doing something like that, here and there, uh, in very few places. So, you know, the, the basic centers for serious history were either the military history branches or the Smithsonian at that point, at least in terms of c- concentrated number of people. 
Matt (Narr): Lately the museum’s curators have been hard at work on the new galleries for the Transformation of the museum. They also keep busy doing new scholarly research, here’s a few of them telling us what they’ve been up to…
Dr Sam Thompson:  My name is Dr. Samantha Thompson. I am the Phoebe Waterman Haas Astronomy Curator. I research the development of imaging technologies in astronomy. I’m really interested in the use of television technology in early 20th century astronomy. 
Dr Mike Hankins:  My name is Dr. Mike Hankins. I am the curator for Modern Military Aviation.  My research focuses on technology development of various military aircraft. Uh, I wrote a book on the development of the F-15 and F-16 fighters, and why they were designed the way that they are. 
Dr Maritzia Gomez:  Hey, my name is Dr. Maritza Gomez. I’m the Guggenheim Postdoctoral Fellow at the National Air and Space Museum, and I’m here researching the history of Mexico and outer space as it was interpreted from film, diplomacy, and science. 
Matt (Narr): The research done by curators of Aeronautics and Space History ends up in the exhibits you can see in the museum through writing, their choice of artifacts, the development of  interactives and other media. And of course a large part of this job is public engagement. The curators do a lot to talk to the public and be on the floor be available and of course things that weren’t available in the 1970s like writing blog posts and co-hosting podcasts for example. 
Researchers in CEPS, Aeronautics and Space History often write grant proposals to fund their research and work with historians and scientists from other organizations.
The push to make the new Air and Space Museum a serious scholarly institution came from the very top of the Smithsonian down to Director Mike Collins and to every member of staff. And that legacy endures today as an institution that continues to produce high quality scholarly research in addition to a top-notch visitor experiences. 
Tom:  Your museum, the way the museum is today, I think you have Sidney Dillon Ripley to thank for that. Mm. I don’t think Mike would’ve gone in that direction if he had been completely free and open to do whatever he wanted. But if you look at the paperwork and you talk to the people, Ripley really wanted that museum to be a serious kind of place. Mm. Probably more serious than it turned out to be. 
But one of the things you’re dealing with in that building is the whole business, the whole notion of progress. I mean, aerospace is the way we define progress in the 20th century. Great non-aerospace things happened, but when people think about their lives and, I mean, every day in every way things are getting better and better, uh, they think about that in terms of air and space. And it’s both a great gift because it draws all those people in, but it’s also a great burden. 
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Matt (Narr): One department we haven’t talked about yet in this episode about scholarly research is our fantastic conservation team. On the next episode we’ll get into some of the work they’ve been doing to add 40% more artifacts into the museum as part of our Transformation project.
And that’s just part of the reimagining of the National Air and Space Museum that’s been in the works for more than a decade
 Chris: The ability to rethink the museum in a way that really gives it years of future and do so, I mean, even better, even better than it was.
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Matt (Narr): Next time on 50 Years of Air + Space, we’ll pull back the curtain on our massive remodel and introduce you to some of the many people preserving and reimagining the Museum for future generations to enjoy.
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Matt (Narr): 50 Years of Air + Space and the AirSpace podcast are from the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum.
It’s produced by Jennifer Weingart and mixed by Tarek Fouda. 50 Years is hosted by me, Dr. Matt Shindell. Our managing producer is Erika Novak. Our production coordinator is Joe Gurr. Our social media manager is Amy Stamm. Our intern is Sofia Foradori.
Special thanks to our guests in this episode, Dr Ted Maxwell, Dr Mike Neufeld, Dr Cathleen Lewis, and Dr Tom Crouch. And for all the curators and researchers who shared a little of their work with us.
For additional content photos and more follow AirSpacePod on Instagram, check us out on the museum’s YouTube page, or sign up for our monthly newsletter using the link in the show notes.
AirSpace is sponsored by Lockheed Martin and distributed by PRX. 
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We rely on the generous support of donors, sponsors, members, and other benefactors to share the history and impact of aviation and spaceflight, educate the public, and inspire future generations.  With your help, we can continue to preserve and safeguard the world’s most comprehensive collection of artifacts representing the great achievements of flight and space exploration.
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