The Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, VA, is dedicated to all the real-world wonders of aeronautics and space exploration, but it also has a few science fiction items as well, including a display on Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen movie, the George Lucas-autographed R2-D2 mailbox and the rocket-shaped World Science Fiction Society Achievement Award given to Golden Age science fiction author and influential rocketry proponent Willy Ley.
Most fascinating, is the presence of the original model for the mothership in Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which was crafted into a grayscale thing of beauty out of random model parts.
Extremely detailed and about the size of a stack of ten pizza boxes, it’s one of the few pieces that could outshine the actual works of legendary human achievement that it’s surrounded by.
