We walked through The National Air and Space Museum on our way to the mall and the folk life festival. In the Milestones of Flight Gallery, the recent additions were two nuclear missiles and the Breitling 3 Orbiter balloon gondola that circumnavigated the globe. The gondola is a great and appropriate new artifact, but it makes no sense having nuclear missiles in the presence of true instruments of achievement such as The Wright Flyer, The Spirit of St. Louis, The Bell X-1, a Mercury capsule, The Apollo 8 command module, Pioneer 10, and The Viking Mars lander. These missiles of mass destruction belong in a museum of national paranoia.

- mike lee - washington, d.c.