Drawing on the peerless collections of the National Air and Space Museum - the most-visited museum in the world - this book brings us the story of the conquest of the skies. More than 400 photographs and illustrations - some commissioned especially for this volume, depict the milestones of aviation and spaceflight. Here are Lindbergh's Spirit of St. Louis, the incomparable DC-3 airliner, Chuck Yeager's record-breaking X-1, the spacecraft and suits of the first Americans to walk in space, Skylab, and the Hubble Space Telescope, as well as other aircraft, rockets, spacecraft, and memorabilia from the museum's vast collections. The richly anecdotal text, by author Andrew Chaikin, takes us inside the struggles, the victories, and the discoveries - and makes the adventure of flight come alive.