The continuing adventures of Kimberly and Willy

Air and Space

Wow....This was fun. We left New Jersey after a great visit with my family and headed to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. We had been to the location on Mall several years ago, so we decided to visit what's called the STEVEN F. UDVAR-HAZY CENTER. This a newer facility opened in 2003 to house the pieces that were deemed too large to go downtown. It's a really grand collection.

First up was the SR71 Blackbird. Really high flying recon aircraft.

From were the pilot sat, really had that strapping on a rocket look to it. Amazing looking aircraft....nary a rivet or anything to make it show up on radar. The speed records were impressive. LA to Washington in 1 hour 4 minutes if I recall correctly. This one has some giddy up and go.

 Next was the space shuttle Enterprise. This one never made it to space but was part of the testing program. Did 5 landings after being dropped off a 747. The production shuttles have slightly larger wings.

 Pretty impressive to stand next to.

 This console was an early part of the space program complete with an old DEC pdp11-35 computer on the right. Thinking that my MAC laptop (possibly even my IPOD) has orders of magnitude more computing power that this puppy.

 This was pretty cool. The model of the mothership from Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Apparently, the model makers had a sense of humor and included R2D2, a Volkswagon bus and a mailbox on the model.

 The very elegant and fabulously fast Concorde.

 The yin and yang of it all. The museum offered a great look at the history of aviation and the progress that was made over the years....You go from the Concord, SR71 and the Shuttle to a few steps away and the Wright Brothers aircraft.

The next day, we drove through Kitty Hawk and past the Wright Brothers Memorial.

Back to Mexico Saturday and then off to California on Tuesday. 

Congratulations to our niece Shelagh and her husband Peter on the birth of their first child.

Posted at 06:14PM Jul 09, 2009 by Willy in General  |  Comments[8]