I went on a pilgrimage yesterday to the National Air & Space Museum, and it was sooooooo cool.
Hadn’t been there in years, and have gotten my pilot’s license since my last visit. So I was primed to see, learn, and soak in the vibes of great aviators.
Years ago I was impressed by the usual I suppose - the LEM, the Apollo 11 capsule, etc. But they’ve added a lot of exhibits, and I found some of the new stuff great. Among the most impressive stuff to me this time around were:
The spacesuit Dave Scott wore on his moonwalks during Apollo 15. It’s in a well-lit glass case, and you can get within inches. It still had moondust all over it!
The X-15 rocket plane. Neil Armstrong flew one before he became an astronaut. Quite literally faster than a speeding bullet.
A Messerschmidt 262. First operational jet fighter plane. It’s a good thing Hitler didn’t think very highly of it…
Spirt of St. Louis. I know it’s probably the most famous plane in the joint, but this time I really looked at it closely. Fabric over wood, with some tube steel. No front window. Geez, Lindbergh must have had cojones the size of coconuts!
P51-D Mustang. What a beautiful airplane. It’s a bit sad to see it sitting there, it’s flying days over.
A Mitsubishi Zero. Very impressive looking plane. Interestingly, there were some Japanese tourists there. They were a bit quiet, and I wondered if they were uncomfortable, considering Pearl Harbor has been in our thoughts lately due to the movie. Made me wonder what it would feel like for me to be a tourist at the Hiroshima Memorial in Japan. Any American Dopers been there?
The TV camera from an unmanned lunar probe that our astronauts brought back on Apollo 12. It’s so weird to think that this thing spend a year and a half on the surface of the moon, and now it’s sitting here in front of me.
Well I took lots of digital pictures, so if anyone would like copies of a particular plane or something, let me know. I hope someone does the same from the Oshkosh air show this year. At least one Doper that I know of is going…
Oh, you’re talking about one of my favorite places, Grok. I used to go down to D.C. about once a month when I lived in Harrisburg. I even went to lecture by Chuck Yeager in '97, about a week shy of the 50th anniversary of the first supersonic flight.
There’s a gallery in the southwest corner of the first floor that’s one of my favorites. They have all but one of the great, old air racing trophies (the Schneider Trophy is in Britain somewhere) and a Northrop Gamma. The 1930s produced some beautiful planes. The rule for aeronautical engineers was that if a plane looked right, it would fly right.
I’m going to be down that way in a couple weeks. I’m going to try to get a tour of the museum’s restoration facility. That’s where they keep the planes they don’t have room for, or just can’t get to the Mall.
I haven’t been to the Air Force Museum yet, Blackclaw, but I’d like to.
And the best part about the A&S Museum is…IT’S FREE!!! (Now, if you buy lunch in the cafeteria…)
Hey, Grok, explain to us (ALL of us) why you did not announce this little pilgrammage on the boards before you went. There are only about 8 million dopers in the DC area who would have loved nothing more than to visit the A&S Museam with you and have a great time. Heck, we would have shown you some of the best watering holes DC has to offer!
I was at the Air & Space Museum a little over a year ago, and I was majorly bummed that one thing I really really wanted to see was off display due to renovations: the Enola Gay. Other than that, yes, it did indeed rock.
A month or so ago they were involved in a Star Wars exhibit where they had a life-size Naboo star-fighter. Apparently its now travelling around the country (no, its not flying jackass) to various smithsonian-affiliated institutions… very cool
I toured the Garber facility several years ago. They have loads of really cool aircraft there, all crammed into dusty warehouses awaiting eventual restoration.
The group only had 10-15 people and the guide was very knowledgable about the collection. If you get the chance, it’s definitely worth the time…
Sorry. It was sort of a spur of the moment thing. However, I could be easily persuaded to go again some time soon, along with a squadron of Dopers.
Revtim, I’ll see about posting the photos. I took a lot though. Let me work on it tomorrow and I’ll post a link.
Bernse, they have a Blackbird at the USS Intrepid Air Museum in NYC. Pretty cool. It’s one of my favorite planes. I was a bit disapointed the NASM didn’t have one on display (I’m sure they MUST have one laying about somewhere…).
Max Torque, the last time I visited NASM some years ago, the Enola Gay was there. I remember it being very moving, and very incongruous. The museum is very triumphant. “Apollo to the Moon”, “Milestones of Flight”, etc.
And then you come to “We Nuked the Bastards”.
That puts the brakes on in a big hurry. I don’t wish to open a debate about the use of the bomb. Maybe it was justified, maybe it wasn’t. But I remain embarrassed that we are the only country ever to have used a nuclear weapon. And that makes that exhibit all the more important. I hope they bring it back on display soon.
They sure do, they just don’t have the room for it in the building on the mall. A new facility is under construction at Dulles International Airport to display the larger stuff in the NASM’s collection, such as the SR-71, the B-29 Enola Gay, the Boeing 707 prototype and loads more. It’s expected to open in December 2003.
The Air and Space Museum is just around the corner from my work. I used to go there every few weeks and walk through during lunch time. The downstairs nasty cafeteria is much more expensive than the good restaurant upstairs. Sounds counterintuitive, doesn’t it? I would eat there periodically. The Hirshorn is more interesting. Right now they have a really good statue on the second floor (not part of the Still’s exhibit) of a hairless, old, naked, fat man who would be about 15-20 feet tall if he stood up. It is made of fiberglass, some type of latex and paint. Even though it isn’t pretty, it is prehaps one of the best pieces of art I have seen. The artist’s last name is Mueck.
I was there just a few weeks ago, and I was particularly fond of the Aviation in the Movies exhibit and the Naval Aviation exhibit. I thought it was cool watching them old-timer’s flicks. The ICBMs were cool too! Kinda wierd how the Soviets just plopped their 3 warheads on top of the one, where the US mounted them inside the frame of the body of the Minuteman. . .
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I respectfully disagree. I thank God we’re the only ones to have used an atomic weapon in anger. I’m not one to debate history and the judgement used at the time. Nor do I take joy in the fact that hundreds of thousands of the enemy were killed in a fleeting instant, but I do appreciate that the world saw that these bombs can do and that helped forge the detente of the Cold War . . .
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Tripler
And DANG that cafeteria was expensive! $4.50 for a slice of pizza!?!
A number of years ago I went on a tour of the Garber Facility at the time the Enola Gay was first being renovated so it could be shown at the Air & Space Museum. The tours usually have about 20 people or so and it takes awhile to go through.
We knew going in that we would be seeing Enola Gay, so we were pretty weirded out to find that several members of our tour group were Japanese. It was one of those times when you really don’t know how to act.
When we got to the Enola Gay, the Japanese surrounded it, avidly taking pictures and conversing among each other. I don’t know what they were saying, of course, but at least they didn’t seem po’d at us.
The Air Force Museum adjacent to Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, OH is truly extraordinary. But you wanna hear something very sad? I’ve lived and worked in Dayton my whole life, and have only been to the museum about three times. Disgusting, huh? Insipid Daytonians such as my self should be severely beaten for taking such a wonderful institution for granted.
Ditto the Air Force Museum. It is much better than the Smithsonian. BTW, I’ve been in DC for three weeks on business–visit the American History Museum. Pretty cool.
I’ve got to see the Smithsonian and Dayton museums someday. If you’re ever in Southern Arizona swing by the Pima Air and Space Museum in Tucson. It’s literally across the road from the air force’s AMARC boneyard so they have the pick of many exotic and one of a kind aircraft. They actually had to reinforce the crossing at Valencia road so the heavies wouldn’t smash through the pavement. They have a lot of heavies. Not many places have room for a B-52 let alone three. They have one of the two BUFs that carried the X-15, the other is still in service with NASA.
Didn’t know if ya’ll knew it but there are still two operational Blackbirds out there. They are both owned by NASA and reside at Edwards Air Force Base.
My dad works for Lockheed-Martin on the F-22 project, so he’s out at Edwards all the time. He told me that they rarely fly anymore, they just maintain them, fuel them up, watch the fuel leak on the tarmac, run the engines, and then put them away.
Well, I’m going to be down there at the end of next week. I’m taking the Garber tour at 10:00 on August 3rd, and I have a ticket at Wolf Trap that evening. I may also be around on the 2nd and/or 4th.