Cosmosphere - Hutchinson, KS

Cosmosphere - Space Museum in Hutchinson, Kansas

If you're a Space Geek and ever anywhere near Hutchinson, Kansas you have to make time to visit the Cosmosphere - International SciEd and Space Museum. The Cosmosphere is an amazing space history museum in the heart of America. It started in 1962 as a planetarium and then quickly grew as it became part of the Hutchinson Community College. The museum contains an impressive variety of space history artifacts from relics from the lab of Dr Robert Goddard ('father' of the modern rocketry), to the auspicious German V-2 rockets that were captured at the end of WWII and used in engineering research in the first years of the US space program, to actual space-flown equipment such as a Soviet 'Vostok' capsule and the US Command Module "Odyssey" from Apollo 13.  The museum contains hundreds of fascinating items detailing all aspects of the manned space programs in the United States and the former Soviet Union). You can (and should) spend hours combing through the collections and taking in each item.

Apollo Program Lunar Module

V-2 Rocket model

Soviet Cosmonaut Spacesuit

Bell X-1 Rocket "Glamorous Glennis" replica

Sputnik replica 

'Vostok 1' replica (spacecraft flown by first person to travel to space - Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin )

Apollo era spacesuits 

This museum is great for all ages and be sure to check out the Dr Robert Goddard's lab show where a very knowledgeable and enthusiastic docent conducts experiments highlighting Dr Goddard's critical contributions to modern rocketry (which sadly few people outside of the Space geek community know of or appreciate).

http://cosmo.org