Today we went to the Air and Space museum located west of DC, near Dulles airport. The first picture below is of the building, very cool looking. The next few are of WWII and Vietnam/Korean war planes. I don't know why we didn't bring you guys here when you came, it was very awesome! Planes hanging all over the place. Shep took some panoramic pictures that we will upload to Google plus later.
The last picture is of the Discovery Orbiter. The second to last one was definitely my favorite part. It was huge. So impressive. It took something like 16 trips to space! And the black parts you are actually made up of little individual pieces, each with a serial number on it (see the last picture)! We thought this might be because of the extreme heat the ship has to endure on reentry, and each piece could expand individually so as not to cause cracks.
Grandpa says he'd like to visit it sometime, especially if there are some Navy planes!
ReplyDeleteMom wants to know whether some planes are suspended from the ceiling or if they are all parked on the ground.
Is pic3 showing the front nose of the shuttle? Is it darker color because that gets hotter on re-entry?
I wasn't sure if there were navy planes, or how to find them. There were a lot of planes from both sides of WWII!
ReplyDeleteTo answer mom's question, there were planes hanging from the ceiling and sitting on the ground as well. You will see this better from the picture Shep will put on Google plus!
And lastly, yes, the close shot of the space ship was the front. We came to the idea that it was dark to help absorb heat. There weren't that many written explanations of things, and it was pretty packed because it was a school break, I guess, so there weren't many people we could ask either!