Located in Los Angeles next to the LA County Museum of Natural History and the LA Coliseum sports stadium, the California Science Center is one of the largest museums in California--and it's free. There is a very nice exhibit on space and aviation (including the space shuttle Endeavour), an aquarium display, and more.
Some photos from a visit to the Science Center.
The California Science Center
The atrium. A T-38 Talon jet trainer (right) and an F-20 Tigershark jet fighter (left) on display.
F-20 Tigershark. developed for sale as a fighter jet for foreign countries, it never really caught on.
T-38 Talon. Used by the US as a two-seat trainer, it was also used by NASA astronauts to fly from one space-training site to another.
1928 Velie Model 70 Monocoupe. One of the first commercially available private airplanes.
Apollo 18 Command Module, used in the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, a joint spaceflight with the USSR in 1975.
Mercury-Redstone Capsule 2. This was the capsule that carried a chimpanzee named "Ham" into space on a suborbital flight in 1962, as a test run before astronaut Alan Shepard's flight.
Gemini 11 spaceship that took astronauts Pete Conrad and Richard Gordon into space in 1962.
Replica of the Mariner 4 Mars probe, 1964.
ITOS-1 weather satellite, 1970.
Vela 5 spy satellite, used to monitor Soviet nuclear weapons tests.
Pioneer 10 Jupiter probe, 1972.
Viking Mars lander, 1976.
Cassini-Huygens Saturn probe, 2004.
Mercury space suit
Apollo space suit
Apollo lunar EVA equipment
Nose cone from an Aerobee atmospheric research rocket.
Iron meteorite
Space shuttle tires, worn from landing.
Space potty--the zero-G toilet from the space shuttle.
Cooking oven from the space shuttle.
Space shuttle "Endeavour".
Me, with the "Endeavour".
Aquarium exhibits.
Leopard Shark
Diver giving a talk in the Kelp Tank.
Kinetic displays for the kids.
A "bait ball" of sardines.
Automotive exhibit.
Cutaway model of an internal combustion engine.
Exhibit on the human body.
Human digestive tract.
Preserved human fetus.
A termite colony in the Insect Zoo.
Hissing cockroaches.