Planes, Bikes and a Rock

Hello friendly bloggers. I hope you all had a wonderful weekend.
It's another museum post for today. So sit back and relax as we fly around my second favorite museum from the DC trip.

The Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum

The National Mall building only features 10% of the collection due to limited space, the rest are at Udvar-Hazy Center near the airport (which is no way part of the loop tour). Nevertheless, this is still very interesting. I got to do something awesome- not that I did something adventurous or outrageous, you'll soon find out at the end.

 Picture below (L-R): Bell XP-59A Airacomet- first American turbojet aircraft, 1942; 2 disarmed missiles (standing) Pershing II (US) and Pioneer (USSR), representing over 2,600 nuclear intermediate range ballistic missiles banned by the Intl. Nuclear Forces Treaty of 1987; North American X-15, first piloted aircraft to exceed 6 times the speed of sound, 1967:

(L-R):SpaceShipOne, the first privately developed piloted vehicle to reach outer space, 2004 (the one that has polka dots!); Bell X-1 Glamorous Glennis, the first airplane to fly faster than the speed of sound, 1947):

 Lunar Module 2 is one of two remaining lunar landers built for the early Apollo missions:

 You can see that the museum is undergoing renovation:

 Also among those suspended from the ceiling is the Spirit of St. Louis in which Charles Lindbergh made his historic solo, nonstop, transatlantic flight from New York to Paris, 1927:

 

The Ford 5-AT Trimotor offered dependable, safe and comfortable service when it was introduced in 1928:

(Top to bottom) Douglas DC-3, most successful airliner in history dominating commercial and military air transportation from 1935 until after WW2; TWA Northrop Alpha (1930); Boeing 247D, first modern airliner (1934); Douglas DC-7 (on the ground), a 1953 airliner where you can walk through the cockpit:

 The Space Race Gallery has artifacts from US and Soviet space programs:

 Apollo 11 Command Module Columbia, the first manned lunar landing mission, 1969.

Hubble Space Telescope:

 Skylab Orbital Workshop:

 

 German V2 missile

 Please don't make me explain this one:

The second floor carries more about the important figures of flight:

 

Douglas World Cruiser "Chicago" first around-the-world flight, 1924:

 

Lockheed Model 8 Sirius, bought and flown by Charles and Anne Lindbergh to survey airline routes, 1930s:

 

 

 The Lockheed 5B Vega flown by Amelia Earhart in 1932 across the Atlantic and nonstop across the United States:

The Wright Brothers and the Invention of the Aerial Age:

St. Clair Bicycle, 1898, one of only five bicycles manufactured by the Wright Brothers known to exist today: 

 

 

 

 

The Curtiss V-8 Motorcycle, Glenn Curtiss was dubbed the fastest man on Earth when he rode this in 1907 (218km/hr; 136mi/hr):

 

1909 Wright Military Flyer, the world's first military airplane:

 

 The Wright Flyer, 1903, the first heavier-than-air, powered aircraft to make a sustained, controlled flight with a pilot aboard:

 

 

Some random photos:

A re-creation of La Minerve (1803), a fanciful design for a self-contained aerial community by Etienne Robertson (I wish there's a cross stitch pattern of it):

 Finally, here's the pretty cool thing I did:

 I touched a piece of the moon! By the way, that's not my finger, that's DH'. 

The rock was collected from the lunar surface by Apollo 17 astraunauts. It's a tiny piece, but boy, there were lots of teens taking groufies with it, you can't even see it anymore with all their fingers touching it at the same time, LOL. Ooops, better get the hand sanitizer ready.

Well, that's it, only one more museum to go:)

Thanks for visiting. Happy Stitching!