The Flight Deck

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 Navy and at NASA through an LGBTQ+ lens. In Season 3 of The Flight Deck, we’re sharing stories of LGBTQ+ people in aerospace. Full shownotes at www.museumofflight.org/podcast

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 in aerospace past and present who are part of the LGBTQ+ umbrella. This list of 10 people is not meant to be comprehensive. If you were making your own list, who would you include? Let us know! Contact us via email at podcast at museumofflight dot org. We’d love to hear your opinions! In Season 3 of The Flight Deck, we’re sharing stories of LGBTQ+ people in aerospace. Full shownotes at www.museumofflight.org/podcast

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 Fellman and Tony Pankuch, two thinkers in the museum and archives world whose focus is on LGBTQ+ stories, join host Sean Mobley to consider people like Sally Ride, Amelia Earhart, Josephine Baker and others from aviation and space history whose stories have much more to say than what typically gets recorded on museum walls. Full shownotes -> https://tmof.click/3NeI3vU

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 of this, referencing everything from modern pictures of deep space phenomenon to the connections the Igbo people have had to the Sirius star system since ancient times to the celestial stylings of Black jazz artist Sun Ra. They join host Sean Mobley for a conversation about their work and the ways sky stories and space exploration have shaped African storytelling for millennia. In Season 3 of The Flight Deck, we’re sharing stories of LGBTQ+ people in aerospace. Full shownotes -> https://tmof.click/41eXhHr

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 National Gay Pilots Association, a worldwide organization dedicated to creating community for LGBTQ+ people across all aviation jobs, and fostering a more inclusive industry. He joined me to share some of his favorite pilot stories, to talk about a 9/11 hero who was a member of the National Gay Pilots Association, and explain why he feels diversity and inclusion aren’t just buzzwords, but a matter of life and death. Content note: At about 28:40, Greg shares a derogatory term for a gay man that was used to describe him by another pilot.

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 topic in his book “Plane Queer: Labor, Sexuality, and AIDS in the History of Male Flight Attendants.” While the book covers almost a century of history, Phil sat down for an interview that focused on the HIV/AIDS crisis, and the way two flight gay male attendants with Pacific Northwest connections left their mark on history. Full shownotes at the link: https://tmof.click/47cWLvq

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 University of Chicago in 2021. They joined our host Sean Mobley for conversation about science, finding their people, and the reasons genuine representation in STEM helps make our own planet a better place for everyone. Full shownotes at https://tmof.click/47lsYk1

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 Group in World War II, to the ways she intentionally transgressed and presented both masculinity and femininity in her life in order to gain access and acceptance, to the thousands of soldiers and celebrities who gathered at her home, each new chapter in her life adds a fascinating dimension to her. In this episode of the podcast, part of our series on LGBTQ+ stories in aerospace, Dr. Judy Tzu-Chun Wu, Professor of Asian American Studies and Associate Dean of the UC Irvine School of Humanities, sheds some light on this forgotten figure in aviation figure. *Note from Sean* - The sound for this episode is a bit low quality due to a recording snafu on my part. Our guest sounds great, but I sound like I’m using a tin can for a microphone! The issue has been resolved for future episodes. Sorry about that! Full shownotes at museumofflight.org/podcast

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 the ways the aerospace industry has shaped the LGBTQ+ community. We’ve got a fantastic lineup of conversations heading your way this season, and it’s starting off with X-15 historian, transgender activist, Air Force veteran and science educator Michelle Evans. Michelle Evans spent most of her Air Force service here in Washington State and was even on base when Mount St. Helens erupted! In this interview, she shares stories from her time in the service, discusses ways her time in the Air Force intersected with her identity as a trans woman, and reflects on how her friendships helped her weather difficult moments on base. Full shownotes and transcript at https://tmof.click/46Iuahl

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 delightful bonus to that trip, our Senior Curator Matthew Burchette got to interview Doug Lantry, Curator at the National Museum of the United States Air Force. Not only that, but he did it in one of the NMUSAF's storage hangars normally out-of-bounds for visitors. This episode wraps up Season 2 of The Flight Deck. Stay tuned for Season 3, premiering in a few weeks! Full show notes and transcript -> https://tmof.click/3szMLx8

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 in hard-to-reach areas over mountains and bodies of water that would take cars hours to travel, in a matter of minutes. On top of that, the helos are equipped with life-saving equipment to keep a patient stable during the trip. Meet a pilot and a nurse for Life Flight in today’s episode to learn more about how aviation provides a vital link between people and the health care they need. Transcript and show notes at the link -> https://tmof.click/3qLsvry

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 few miles of The Museum of Flight? Join Geoff Nunn, our Adjunct Curator for Space History, and our Senior Curator Matthew Burchette for a conversation about these small orbiting wonders. Get the full shownotes and transcript --> https://tmof.click/458yGFc

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 conversation with some of the behind-the-scenes crew of the Blues, learning about the many people who support the team to keep the Blues in safe condition. Full show notes ➡️ https://tmof.click/3DM7VKF

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 Loose!” The Museum of Flight’s hit webseries. With almost 4 million views, the show features our Senior Curator Matthew Burchette taking viewers into areas of the aviation industry they normally don’t get to explore. If you’ve seen the webseries, you probably enjoy the epic interviews Matthew’s scored with fascinating folks from across the country. But you probably don’t realize that those interviews are greatly condensed for the tv series. We’ll be sharing extended interviews, or conversations that were cut entirely for time! Did you know that airports have their own specialized fire stations? In today’s episode, Matthew’s taking us to the Aircraft Rescue and Fire Fighting station here on Boeing Field. Learn the connection between the fire station and the Museum, and how the firefighters prepare to respond to an incident anywhere on the field within seconds. Transcript/Full show notes ➡️ https://blog.museumofflight.org/flightdeck/fire-on-the-airfield

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 of the hijacking, the aircraft involved in the search for Cooper, and the theories that persist even to this day about the true identity of the missing criminal. Full Shownotes -> https://bit.ly/3rK4BLo

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. What followed is a tale of danger, extortion, and hundreds of thousands of missing dollars - over a million in today's money. Host Sean Mobley sat down with Museum of Flight docent Mike Burns to get the story. Full shownotes --> https://bit.ly/3nKGtG7

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 classic 747, first as a stewardess, then as a flight attendant. She joins host Sean Mobley for a conversation about her career chock full of stories from the friendly skies. Full show notes -> https://bit.ly/3CDY5YX

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 minutes as he leads you through a game of Alone Among the Stars, a journaling game by Takuma Okada (@noroadhome) where you play an intergalactic explorer chronicling their adventures through a series of writing prompts. Imagination is at the core of science, so remember to practice imagining from time to time! You never know what discovery it can lead to. Full Show Notes -> https://bit.ly/3pifGC8 Photo Credit: NASA

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 Engineering since 1993, where she ponders questions like how giraffes avoid passing out lifting their little heads up to munch on some trees, and uses these findings to lead a team of innovators creating the MIT BioSuit, which is a completely new approach to a long-standing challenge in aerospace, namely how to keep a human body pressurized at high altitudes or in space, where pressure is absent. A BioSuit is currently on display at The Museum of Flight in our temporary exhibit, “Stranger Than Fiction: The Incredible Science of Aerospace Medicine.” Dr. Newman joins host Sean Mobley to talk about giraffes, and other inspirations from nature, about the BioSuit, and about how imagination and creative thinking dwell at the core of science and engineering. Full shownotes here: https://bit.ly/3AcmB1x

How do you build a rocket engine without blowing your factory up? Vern Estes took on this assignment as one of his first tasks in the family business of model rocket manufacturing. In today’s podcast episode, he recalls reaching the challenging goal of creating a machine that could quickly, and safely, pack model rocket engines to keep up with the voracious demand from a public eager to launch their own kits into the atmosphere. Full Shownotes: https://bit.ly/3CpOlRE