EVERY VINTAGE AIRPLANE displayed outside museum walls suffers from some degree of exposure, but the 22 machines on the flight deck of the Intrepid Sea, Air Space Museum are parked in a special kind of hell. "I cannot think of a worse environment for aircraft," says the Intrepid's aviation curator Eric Boehm. "While other aviation museums struggle with various environmental issues, it's rare for an institution to battle so many at once, and at such extremes, as we do. Our situation is challenging." New York City's blend of salt air, noxious pollution, and animal pests, combined with icy winter winds and ruthless summer sun exposure, constantly work to break these aircraft down to their most basic elements. "The simple science of it is that nature wants to convert them back to dust," Boehm says. "We have to fight this deterioration process every day."
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