"good old-fashioned American gray tape"

https://airandspace.si.edu/stories/editorial/duct-tape-auto-...

The tape and its many varieties have many names. "Duct tape" is commonly used today, but was not as common then, and wasn't in the dictionary until part way through the Apollo program.

I learned about gaffer tape working on sets decades ago and the all the experienced gaffers had a couple of rolls of it on a rope loop hanging off their tool belt. White for labeling stuff with a Sharpie, black for securing or hiding stuff that might be on camera. I've had a similar loop on my tool pouch ever since because it's so useful. It's sold a lot of places but quality can vary. Studio supply houses only sell the top grade stuff.

Lots of people assume that "duck" is actually the misunderstanding, and that it must be a slurring of "duct", but there's no history of using duck tape on ducts. It's the wrong tool for the job, and the wrong name for the material. I'm surprised to see that sources like the NYT and Wikipedia are using "duct tape" as the preferred term.

The Cosmosphere's got a more impressive collection (though that Saturn V makes up a lot of ground for Huntsville) and the presentation is much better.

There's an OK zoo (great, adjusting for where it is, really) nearby, worth a stop if you're there with kids anyway, but not much else I know of in the area. It's weird that there's such a good museum so far from everything, including from the most-traveled highway through-routes for the state.

Neil Armstrong’s Museum in Wapakoneta, OH isn’t that much further away, but much smaller.

They have, IIRC, one of the Gemini capsules, but also some really cool demonstrations. It is worth it to time that and one of the Trinity test site tours if you're interested in nuclear history as well, then take a trip north to Albuquerque for the Nat'l Nuclear History Museum and (for the kids and kidlike adults) Explora is a neat little hands on museum.