1940 Air Terminal Museum Begins Liquidation

dtagames•about 5 hours ago

I had no idea this closed and I've lived here for six years! I can't believe I didn't go visit.

Surely there is enough money in this city of Houston between airlines that operate here and the oil companies that they spend most of your ticket money on to keep this open?

ljoshua•about 5 hours ago

It really was/is a gem of a museum, very fun to visit and quite approachable. We went a couple times, once when they had some fly-ins that made it extra special.

Hopefully it can be preserved and continue it's life! There is hope: https://www.1940airterminal.org/news/texas-historical-commis...

MichaelZuo•about 5 hours ago

I don’t see why they couldn’t make ends meet with events and so on.

There shouldn’t be any huge expenses, unless they were leasing the premises at market rate.

SoftTalker•about 4 hours ago

The rack in this image appears to house a Texas Instruments minicomputer of some model, not sure exactly which. 980 maybe? Might be fun to play with, but not for $20K.

https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e52f79c0260e6...

Note the 8" floppy disk drives also.

bilegeek•42 minutes ago

Looks like a 980B. Pic from a DC-8 sim for reference.

https://i.imgur.com/b3py96N.jpeg

https://imgur.com/gallery/dc-8-simulator-xY7eS

arjie•36 minutes ago

Getting it working would probably be a massive challenge since it’s missing parts.

badc0ffee•about 4 hours ago

Usagi Electric is in Texas. He could make use of that thing.

nsxwolf•28 minutes ago

The 980 was used as the CPU in the Evans and Sutherland Novoview graphics system, part of a flight simulator.

stdbrouw•about 4 hours ago

Side note: what a stunning art deco (?) building! (There's a photo on the front page of the site.)

macintux•about 3 hours ago

To anyone for whom Houston is a bit too far of a drive (plus the fact that the museum now seems closed), but Cincinnati is not: Union Terminal is another beautiful example of art deco.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cincinnati_Union_Terminal

I spent hours photographing in there last summer. Free tours available which will take you into some of the back offices with more art deco goodness.

EvanAnderson•about 1 hour ago

Fellow Union Terminal aficionado here. Also highly recommend to any art deco architecture lovers.

Even if you're not into art deco architecture it's worth a visit. The Omnimax theatre is worth the trip alone, but the museums are great too.

@macintux - It's hard to get on the tour because they sell out, and they don't allow photography, but the high steel tour, which includes walking up to the top of the inside of the half dome, is great. There's some duplication with the behind the scenes tour but it's still worth it. It's probably second to the (now discontinued for liability reasons) Cincinnati subway tour in terms of seeing cool hidden stuff in the Cincinnati area.

skyblock500•about 4 hours ago

I believe that if we all collectively lowball them, they will drop the price to be lower than $20k.

It is unfortunate to see any museum close. I hope their assessment from the Texas Historical Commission succeeds!

convolvatron•about 1 hour ago

that's seriously not the issue. if you look at the those pictures of the 737 frame - this is very large system which hasn't operated for many years and is largely just a pile of components at this point. it would probably be easier to rebuild the control system from scratch than try to bring it back to life. this would probably take a team of pretty serious people many years to get functional.

rationalist•about 4 hours ago

I have been to this museum, it is nice. If anyone can support it, please look into it and do so. Thank you.

captainregex•about 1 hour ago

wow, this blows on so many levels.

system2•about 4 hours ago

20k is not bad for an airplane geek. I wish I had space for these.

sublinear•about 4 hours ago

Museum photos caption: "asdfsd"

1940 Air Terminal Museum Begins Liquidation

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