National Air and Space Museum; Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center

This past Thanksgiving weekend, Janna and I spent some time in the Washington, DC area.  We were interested in visiting some of the Smithsonian museums.  We had the downtown ones in mind, but we had an unexpected opportunity to visit the recently opened Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center.  Naturally, we took it.  We wouldn't have much time--we'd be dropped off while our companions ran some errands and picked up afterwards--but it would be enough for us to at least get a chance to see some of the main sights.

The museum is free, but parking costs $12.  This didn't directly affect us since we were being dropped off, but our driver had to argue briefly with the person at the gate before being let in.  The security man at the dropoff area was also testy.  I guess that's understandable in today's climate of hyper-security.  On the way in we passed the one food option available, a McDonald's.  Happily we didn't have to eat at the museum, as I'd much rather have had more choice, but we did wish we could have gotten our hands on some of the space toys that came with the Happy Meals.

For the most part the museum is in two large hangars, with lots of walking room to view the air- and spacecraft on display.  There is also an observation tower, which was once an actual aircraft control tower.  Since we expected that we might have a long wait for this we decided to wait for it right away.  Within 20 minutes we were in the elevator going up to the top level of the tower.  Later on we saw the line had gotten to be at least twice as long, so our decision to do it right away was a good one.

The observation tower gave us an impressive view of the surrounding countryside, and planes landing at the nearby Dulles airport.  The planes flew by very closely on both sides of the tower, close enough to see their airline insignia.  I'm sure an airplane aficionado could spend hours there just watching.  Even for a non-enthusiast the view was striking.  In the clear air we could see the Blue Ridge Mountains off in the distance.

We didn't have time to linger, so we went down a level to the air traffic control exhibit.  There were no windows on this level, and not much otherwise to see.  There were a few non-interactive displays, a screen such as an air traffic controller might see, and audio of actual dialogue with pilots.  I am somewhat curious about how air traffic controllers do their jobs, but the exhibits here didn't really give me a very vivid picture.  I hope they will do some more work to improve this exhibit and make it more dynamic.  Perhaps they will--after all, on the way down in the elevator, the operator told us the entire museum was a work in progress; and that they had at least 80 more planes to put on display.  I hope they do as much work on the exhibits above as in the main hangars.

Next in my list of priorities was the space hangar, since I was more interested in space flight than aviation.  There was a lot to see in the space hangar, but the centerpiece was clearly the Space Shuttle Enterprise.  This was the prototype space shuttle vehicle never designed to go into space, but it still cuts an impressive figure with its very familiar profile.

The rest of the collection was very eclectic.  Around the edges of the building are scattered a lot of other exhibits, and satellites and space probes hanging from the ceiling.  The disadvantage of this was that we never found any explanatory signs for these items.

To go through everything in detail would have taken much more time than we had, so we browsed what we could.  I focused on a few things of particular interest to me.  I liked seeing fragments of old rockets--there were many engines from different types of rocket.  I also was surprisingly fascinated by an instrumentation ring from a Saturn V.  Though it was only a thin segment of the entire assembly, the large diameter gave an indication of how massive the complete rocket would have been.  I wish they had more Saturn V equipment on display than I saw.  There was at least one complete smaller rocket standing in one corner--a Redstone, one of the earliest types used in the US space program.

Another highlight for me were several old pieces of computer equipment that had been used for mission control.  For similar reasons I was really interested to see an Apollo onboard guidance computer.  As a computer history aficionado, I was really fascinated by these, and regretted that I couldn't see them in operation.  I would love an interactive exhibit using this equipment (or perhaps a facsimile of some sort).

Scattered through the rest of the hangar were a variety of old space vehicles, vehicle prototypes, and other sundry equipment.  I saw capsules from Mercury and Gemini, and a more exotic Russian Vega space probe.  Even more unusual was a vehicle for quarantining returning astronauts.  Interestingly, it was an Airstream RV.  Another of the most interesting miscellaneous displays, at least to me, was the set of 50's and 60's vintage space toys.  Even though I hadn't played with them myself when I was a kid, they gave me a very nostalgic feel, recalling a more naïve and optimistic era.

Also in this hangar is a slightly different display, the original model of the Mother Ship from the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind.  Honestly it didn't mean much to me (though I have enjoyed that movie); the real space vehicles are much more interesting.  I did test my eyesight by looking for the "Easter egg" R2D2 figure hidden on the rim of the craft, and had no trouble at all finding it.

With time running out, we returned to the aircraft hangar.  We didn't get to see everything here by a long shot.  In fact, we didn't even get to walk through one entire half of the hangar.  Even in the half we walked through, there were so many items on display--parked on the floor or suspended from the ceiling, that we could only glance at most of them. Besides the planes were missiles and other oddities like portable helicopters

We did linger a bit more by the featured aircraft--an SR71 Blackbird, a Concorde, and the Enola Gay.  There wasn't much to do but look (and photograph) but I was truly fascinated by the Enola Gay in particular, due to its sheer historical significance.  I also loved looking at a less significant but still quite historical craft, the Flying Cloud, an old Boeing propellor plane that flew for Pan Am.  It was a beautiful reflective silver, very elegant.  I wish all airplanes showed such a fine aesthetic sense.

One thing that struck me as odd was how many German World War II craft were on display, judging by the number of swastika insignia I saw.  I wonder how they managed to amass such a collection.  This, as well as the other military craft and missiles on display, led me to the realization of how much aviation owes to the military--our own and others'.

At the end of the hangar the parade of vehicles finally gave out, recalling the elevator operator's comment that they had more items yet to put on display.  But regardless of their future plans, there is already a very impressive collection.  Had we had time, we would have walked along one of the upper level catwalks, where we could have gotten an overhead view of the planes on the ground, and a closer look at some suspended from the ceiling.  This will have to await our next visit.  I'm sure we will indeed be back in a few more years, when I expect a more complete and even more impressive collection of fascinating vehicles.