By LESLIE MILLER
CHANTILLY, Va. (AP) -- John Travolta lost his movie-star cool while admiring the aviation marvels at the National Air and Space Museum's new second home.
He was one of 2,000 people at the dedication Thursday of the huge hangar, which exhibits such treasures as Amelia Earhart's flight suit and the Enterprise space shuttle.
Travolta declared his love for the Concorde, waved fondly at the Boeing 707 (he owns one) and tried to imagine what it would have been like to pilot the sleek SR-71 Blackbird spy plane from coast to coast in an hour.
"It's amazing," Travolta said. "This is a time to let go and become a kid again."
John Glenn, who circled the Earth, and Neil Armstrong, who stood on the moon, gaped along with everyone else at the impressive collection - the Enola Gay, the Spacelab module, a Boeing 307 Stratoliner, various rockets, missiles, satellites, fighters and jetliners.
The huge museum is 28 miles west of the original's home on the National Mall. It opens Monday, two days shy of the 100th anniversary of the Wright brothers' first powered flight.
Vice President Dick Cheney, presiding over the dedication, called it "a monument to the great achievements of flight and to the even greater possibilities of the future."
Some aviation pioneers applauded and cheered. Armstrong was the first man to walk on the moon. Glenn was the first American to orbit Earth. Scott Crossfield was the first to fly at Mach 2 and Mach 3, faster than the speed of sound. Burt Rutan designed Voyager, which flew nonstop around the world in 1986.
Paul Tibbetts, who commanded the Enola Gay, stood in front of the restored aircraft, chatting about his role aboard the plane that dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945.
Museum officials avoided the controversy that grounded a 1995 exhibit of the Enola Gay because it discussed the effects of the bomb dropped by the B-29 bomber. Japanese survivors have said they want the exhibit to focus more on the damage of the atom bomb.
For Gale Fitzwater of Fairfax County, Va., the 82 restored aircraft and 61 large space artifacts reflect the amazing technological changes that have occurred in her mother's 94-year-lifetime.
"It's just unbelievable," she said.
Travolta, who introduced the pioneers of flight, found the most moving moment of the ceremony came when the space station astronauts, televised from space via satellite, counted down for a replica Wright Flyer to start gliding from the 10-story ceiling onto the stage.
"I started to cry," he said.
The museum, located near Dulles International Airport, is expected to draw 3 million visitors in its first year. The original Air and Space Museum, which will remain open, is the most visited museum in the world, with 9 million guests a year. Both are free, though parking at the new facility costs $12.
The original museum in Washington displays only about 10 percent of its priceless collection of aircraft and large space artifacts. Some 10 percent of the collection is on loan to museums worldwide; the rest has been kept at a restoration and storage facility in Suitland, Md., and in hangars at Dulles and elsewhere.
The new addition to the Smithsonian Institution is named for Steven F. Udvar-Hazy, a Hungarian immigrant who made a fortune in aircraft leasing. Udvar-Hazy donated $60 million in 1999 for the project, which is estimated to cost $311 million when complete. At the time it was the Smithsonian's largest-ever donation.
Elevated walkways rising 50 feet allow people to get close to biplanes, ultralights, gliders and stunt planes, suspended as if in their typical flight maneuvers.
Outside the hangar, visitors can watch planes taking off and landing at Dulles from a 164-foot-high observation tower. It has equipment like that used in an airport control tower.
The facility is not yet finished. Plans call for restoration of another 118 aircraft in the next four years, the opening of a space hangar and construction of a renovation and archives storage building.
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