The Intrepid Sea, Air & Space museum is a military & space exploration museum, docked in New York City at Pier 86 in Hells’ Kitchen. History, technology and military service are on display at the Intrepid Museum. The star attractions are the USS Growler submarine, the Enterprise space shuttle and 28 aircraft dotted around the upper deck.

I acknowledge the Wappinger and Lenape people as the First Nations owners of the lands now recognised as New York City. I pay respect to their Elders, lores, customs and creation spirits. I recognise that these lands have always been places of great natural beauty, culture and community. 

The open air museum is housed in the USS Intrepid, a retired military aircraft carrier that was used in WWII, the Cold War and the Vietnam War before being decommissioned in 1974.

We broke down our visit into three parts: air, sea and space.

Intrepid Museum: The Verdict

Let’s be honest: the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum would not have been my first choice of museums to visit in New York City. I wouldn’t have visited, but my boyfriend was really excited to go and I was happy to tag along.

Just like when I visited the French military museum at Invalides in Paris with Dad or when I attended my first baseball game at Yankee Stadium, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed visiting the Intrepid Museum.

It’s a museum I would have skipped in a heartbeat but was one of the most memorable of my time in the city – particularly because I found a new appreciation and understanding of the space age, something I had no interest in before.

During the “air” section I admired the paintwork on the planes but glossed over the details of the make, model and each aircraft’s destruction specialty.

In the “sea” section it was interesting to see get an insight into naval life on the U.S.S Intrepid but I’m not sure how much I learned (other than that I am not cut out for the navy).

The “space” section of the museum made me interested in outer space. It helped me appreciate the magnitude of the human achievement of entering outer space and the profound impact that it had on technology, society and culture. I walked out with a new appreciate for how very big and very fascinating our universe is.

Air

The flight deck overlooks Hell’s Kitchen, with the Manhattan skyline making a striking backdrop for such an unusual collection of aircraft that looked like cartoons brought to life.

The Intrepid’s impressive aircraft collection includes the Lockheed A-12, which is the fastest military jet and spy plane in the world, and the British Airways Concorde, which is the fastest commercial aircraft in the world. While I admired the colourful paint jobs on many of the older aircraft, I shuddered to think of the pain each aircraft had inflicted in its lifetime.

The museum’s Concorde on display flew more trans-Atlantic flights than any other Concorde in the British Airways fleet. Before the fatal Air France Concorde crash in 2000, the revolutionary commercial plane had cut the flight from New York to London down to just 2 hours and 58 minutes.

General admission to the Intrepid Museum is $26, or $36 if you want to visit the Space Shuttle Pavilion (which we did). Entrance to the Concorde for a guided tour is an extra $15 each, which would have brought our museum cost for two to $102. We skipped the Concorde tour.

I deeply regretted wearing a short skirt because I was on the brink of flashing hundreds of people, the entire time we were wandering around the gusty flight deck. I was relieved to go inside the Intrepid until I realised that it involved climbing several sets of stairs that were basically ladders. Wear jeans, you’ve been warned.

Sea

This part of the museum probably made more sense to my boyfriend than to me, but I did find it fascinating peering into the cramped sleeping quarters of the servicemen. It’s hard to imagine life at sea, especially in such sparse conditions.

Inside the Intrepid was very hands on, and ex-servicemen volunteered their expertise, enthusiastically explaining the workings of various parts of the ship.

“Were you in Vietnam, Len?” one volunteer in his mid-sixties asked another.

“Yes, I served in Vietnam. Did you?”

“I was meant to, but our ship broke down on the way there! A funny story, I’ll tell you about it later.”

It was uncomfortable to consider that if it weren’t for a mechanical fault, the spirited volunteer who stood in front of us, might not be standing in front of us. Some 50,000 servicemen worked on the Intrepid between 1943-1974, with 270 of them never to return home.

Space

The final part of our visit was the Hangar Deck and Space Shuttle Pavilion. My mind had begun to wander to what we’d have for lunch when I found an exhibit about the Hubble Telescope – something I had microscopic knowledge about prior to my visit.

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope is still in operation to this day and has led to a number of discoveries and raised more questions about the universe. The telescope has led to the discovery of more than 1800 extra-solar planets, which are planets that orbit around a star other than the sun.

I learned that in four billion years the Milky Way (our galaxy) and Andromeda (our neighbouring galaxy) will collide and merge into one. Galaxies are attracted to each other and this is just what they do. Who knew?

When we look at the night sky, we are looking at 690,000,000 galaxies. I saw beautiful pictures of nebulae, which is when a star dies and the energy and gases begin to be released.

Understanding the Space Age

It was fascinating seeing how popular culture was influenced by outer space. As the world entered the space age, the aesthetic of American life in the 1950s and 60s followed suit. Products that had nothing to do with space started to use images of the Endeavour in their advertisements.

The space race had widespread impact on architecture, with the space-inspired designs having a lasting impact particularly on American diners, gas stations and motels. Later in the afternoon, when we were in Empire Diner in Chelsea, I noticed how the space age had influenced the design of the diner. The silver, space-ship like fit out, including stainless steel doors with bubble-like windows, reflected the world’s obsession with outer space.

The Space Age can be felt in the design of stark, white cubic rooms of art galleries the world over and the shape of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim on the Upper East Side.

Tang, a powdered, orange-flavoured drink saw a spike in popularity after NASA began using it in its Gemini space flight program. Space ships and shuttles became popular children’s toys and fashion designer Pierre Cardin’s space age collection hit the runways with silver PVC pants and white cat suits. The Jetsons took over the small screen and James Bond starred in Moonraker.

As a millenial who didn’t experience the Space Age firsthand, it was a great insight into a point in time (and space!) that I’d never thought much about. Visiting the Intrepid Museum helped me understand a little bit more about the world and why it is the way it is.

Learning new things about the world and myself is why I love travelling in the first place.

Have you been to the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum? What is your favourite museum in the world?

Planning a trip to New York? Check out my New York City archives.

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