Clayton Anderson, president and CEO of the museum and an aerospace engineer and former NASA astronaut, commissioned the exhibit to emphasize the history of the B-36 as well as provide museum guests with an immersive experience. The interactive tunnel exhibit is now part of the museum with help from four mechanical engineering students: Evan Harner, Alex Kolke, Summer McGrew and Dan Schnoor, and their 2023 senior design capstone project. In May, at the college’s annual Senior Design Showcase, the team displayed a six-foot section of the tunnel.
The students constructed their project off a system crew members of the bomber used to move from one end of the aircraft to the other, covering about 70 yards in a tube that was only three feet wide.
The B-36, known as “the Peacemaker,” is one of the museum’s most popular attractions as its 236-foot wingspan is the widest for any piston-engine aircraft ever built. To access the compartment in the back of the plane, crew members traveled through the pressurized tunnel linked to the flight deck as the plane was designed to fly long and arduous missions up to 7,000 miles roundtrip and stay aloft as long as 40 hours requiring the crew to sleep while in flight.