National Air and Space Museum

Here's a post about our quick rush through the Air and Space Museum.

We only had about an hour to spend in the museum, so I decided to just focus on a couple areas devoted to the space program. Because of the whole Alexei Leonov connection to Russian adoption, a mandatory stop would be the Apollo Soyuz exhibit.

Immediately as you walk into the museum you are confronted with many pieces of space and aviation history. Here is run down of some of the items in the lobby alone.

On the left in the foreground is Space Ship One, the first private vehicle to reach sub-orbital space. On the right and in the background is the X-1 Chuck Yeager flew to break the sound barrier. On the far right in the foreground is a model of Explorer-1, the first American satellite.


Here is the X-15 which tested hypersonic flight. Like SS-1 and the X-1, it was dropped from an aircraft.


A model of Sputnik-1 was hanging near the Explorer-1 model.


This is the Gemini 4 capsule that Ed White exited on the first American spacewalk. Alexei Leonov beat him to it several months earlier.


Here is the Apollo 11 command module "Columbia" which returned Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins to the earth.

There was plenty of Russian/Soviet artifacts to stimulate Jason Alexei's appreciation for his native culture.

Here is a picture of him in his umbrella stroller in front of a Soviet SS-20 and an American Pershing II IRBM. These weapons were eliminated by the INF treaty signed by Reagan and Gorbachev. The Soviet rocket was bigger.

And here he is in front of a model of the Proton rocket produced by the Krunichev design bureau.


A couple things really bummed me out while I was there related to how we waste our capabilities in this country. We wasted so much capability during the 1970's.

America's first space station was Skylab. The last Saturn V to fly launched Skylab in 1973. Skylab reentered the atmosphere in 1979. It would be 20 years before the US had another space station in orbit. All that time the US had a fully completed space station that could have flown, along with a choice of two flight ready Saturn V's to launch it. Where is that station now? It is an exhibit in the museum. You can walk through it if you want. Where are the Saturn V's? They are at museums in Houston and at the Cape (the one in Huntsville is not flight hardware).


Here is another good example of wasted technology. This scene depicts the Apollo 11 landing on the moon and mankind's first steps on another world. Where do you think this lander came from? Is it a really accurate model? NO! It is actual flight hardware. It is Lunar Module #2. Lunar Module #9 never made it to the moon either and is at the Kennedy Space Center.


We easily could have flown the second Skylab and one additional moon landing mission, but walked away from it. The hardware was bought and paid for. Operating budgets were cut and the missions cancelled. We felt the space race had been won, but really all we had done was complete the first lap. It will take another ten years to rebuild the capability we threw away back in the 1970's. Crazy.

Getting off my soap-box, we moved on to look at the Apollo Soyuz exhibit. Nearby was a depiction of Alexei Leonov on his Voskhod 2 mission, becoming the first man to walk in space. I have a print of a self-portrait Alexei painted of this event. This suit was one he used in training.


And right nearby was a suit that Yuri Gagarin used. The shuttle astronauts also wear orange suits during launch and landing. When Jason sees them in them, he calls them Yuri. Pretty smart connection if you ask me.


As all good Russian Lenentine boys do, Jason doesn't believe in the capitalist Santa Claus. Instead, Jason knows the truth of the holidays, that some fat man with flying reindeer just isn't going to deliver all those toys in one night. It requires something with far greater capability. This is where Yuri Claus kicks in. Yes, Yuri Claus. In case you have never heard of Yuri Claus, I'll do a special posting on him. It is time the world comes to know the truth about how all those presents get delivered.

We also visited with "Ivan Ivanovich." Ivan was one of the world's first space travelers. He flew in space twice in the month of March 1961. His flights paved the way for Yuri to make his flight.



There was so much more to see, but just not enough time. We'll have to get back there and look at all the other stuff. In addition to the original Washington, DC building, there is a totally separate annex near Dulles, VA which would take a day to go through. Maybe another time.