On my last half day in Washington DC, I headed to the National Air & Space Museum, and followed a guided tour around to look at crazy cool old planes and spaceships, and spacesuits, and all sorts of stuff. This is a great museum for anyone who loves engineering. They’ve got the Wright Flyer, The Spirit of St. Louis, Skylab B, an Apollo test lander, a Saturn V rocket exhaust… All kinds of cool stuff.
I didn’t take that many photos because the lighting didn’t seem great at the time, and I was utterly exhausted from carrying around my bags, and frankly my brain wasn’t keeping up.
Here’s a loopy monument.
The Spirit of St. Louis. Charles Lindbergh made them put the engine in the front, so there’s no front windows. He hung out of the side to see what was in front of him. I mean, he was flying across the Atlantic, so there wasn’t much to see.
How about it, would you fly across the ocean in one of these?
Here is an Apollo lunar module. This is actually slightly smaller in scale, because it was a test model.
Here is an Apollo Command Module. I don’t remember which one. I don’t think it’s Apollo 11. Boy, I should have written this down instead of waiting four months.
Another Apollo command module. I also don’t know which one this is, because my brain is filled with garbage like the entire discography of R.E.M.
The exhaust funnel from a Saturn V rocket.
An X-15 rocket plane. Neil Armstrong tested this plane.
The Wright Flyer
Planes planes planes.
I also quickly ran around the Natural History Museum, but it was very crowded and I was carrying a heavy backpack, so I quickly became tired and claustrophobic, and then I couldn’t find the exit for about 20 minutes and almost had a panic attack. Hooray!
¡Es un muerto elefante enorme!
Bobcat Goldthwait?
I made it out eventually and called it a day. And so I headed to the bus station, and on to Richmond, Virginia, the former capital of the Confederate States of America.