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mmcirvinSam and I spent most of our vacation on or near the beach in Lewes, Delaware, but I also made a short visit to the new Udvar-Hazy Center of the National Air and Space Museum, which is close to my parents' house (to their great dismay, as it's attracted even more traffic). I didn't take any pictures there, since pictures of the interior of the place and its contents are not exactly hard to find.
It's an interesting place, in some ways a throwback to the presentational style of older and smaller museums. The main museum building on the Mall in Washington, which opened in 1976 (I remember it well), is more what you'd expect of a Smithsonian museum, with both big halls for big objects, and smaller exhibit galleries to the sides that are crammed with anything that will fit in them and elaborate displays of contextual information. The Udvar-Hazy center isn't like that; it's basically a big T-shaped hangar designed to hold the overflow collection previously displayed by appointment at the restoration facility in Suitland, Maryland, and some objects that are just really freaking huge, like, say, a Space Shuttle orbiter or a Concorde. The few side exhibits are bare-bones, here-is-a-row-of-objects displays (one of historical aircraft engines, another of spy cameras) with relatively little to explain what they are or how they work. Of course, few people really come to a museum to absorb the informational displays, so this may be a fine thing from the visitor's perspective. The cool stuff is all there. Still, it contributes to my impression that the place is very much a work in progress.
I can confirm that, yes indeed, there's a Space Shuttle orbiter and a Concorde in there. And the prototype for the Boeing 707, and an SR-71 Blackbird. And the Enola Gay, which has been getting lots of interesting protester attention lately.
That particular Concorde was actually one of the first ever to land at Dulles Airport in May, 1976. I remember seeing it come in; my neighborhood was under the airport's approach patterns, and they pulled us out of class to see it land. It was the future!
The Shuttle is the Enterprise, the prototype used for glide tests in the late 1970s, which had been in storage at Dulles for years and years. Before that, for a while they had it out in the open to make people wonder what it was doing there when they spotted it from the air or the taxiway. I also remember seeing the Enterprise come in: they flew it to Dulles by carrier 747 when I was a senior in high school, and I saw it from the school bus. You can't actually walk right up to it at the moment; it's covered with scaffolding—apparently it wasn't possible to start serious restoration work on it until it was moved out of the old hangar at the airport to the Udvar-Hazy Center. Also, a few pieces of it were removed so NASA could use them for the Columbia accident investigation.
The Enterprise is in the stem of the T, called the Space Hangar. It's currently blocked off, so that you can just walk up to it and look inside, and its interior is unfinished except for a few objects displayed near the railing, such as a Gemini and a Mercury capsule. They've got some more objects that will eventually go there in a corner of the larger Aviation Hangar, such as some Spacelab modules that flew on the Shuttle, a backup of a gigantic Soviet Venus/Halley probe, some spacesuits and whatnot, and, incongruously, a prop from Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
The Aviation Hangar is all open to visitors. There's a heavier emphasis on military aviation than at the Mall facility; in particular, there's a lot more stuff from the Cold War and the Korea and Vietnam wars, and some modern military equipment. Even with all the airliners, bombers, cruise missiles and stunt planes inside it, it feels as if there's a lot of unused space in there. They've clearly built in lots of room for expansion.
On the whole, while it's worth a visit for all the impressive huge things inside, it's not as engrossing a place as the Mall facility; it might not warrant a whole-day visit unless you're really into staring hard at airplanes, since I managed to see almost the entire collection in the couple of hours I had before closing. I expect it to become more interesting in coming years.
It's an interesting place, in some ways a throwback to the presentational style of older and smaller museums. The main museum building on the Mall in Washington, which opened in 1976 (I remember it well), is more what you'd expect of a Smithsonian museum, with both big halls for big objects, and smaller exhibit galleries to the sides that are crammed with anything that will fit in them and elaborate displays of contextual information. The Udvar-Hazy center isn't like that; it's basically a big T-shaped hangar designed to hold the overflow collection previously displayed by appointment at the restoration facility in Suitland, Maryland, and some objects that are just really freaking huge, like, say, a Space Shuttle orbiter or a Concorde. The few side exhibits are bare-bones, here-is-a-row-of-objects displays (one of historical aircraft engines, another of spy cameras) with relatively little to explain what they are or how they work. Of course, few people really come to a museum to absorb the informational displays, so this may be a fine thing from the visitor's perspective. The cool stuff is all there. Still, it contributes to my impression that the place is very much a work in progress.
I can confirm that, yes indeed, there's a Space Shuttle orbiter and a Concorde in there. And the prototype for the Boeing 707, and an SR-71 Blackbird. And the Enola Gay, which has been getting lots of interesting protester attention lately.
That particular Concorde was actually one of the first ever to land at Dulles Airport in May, 1976. I remember seeing it come in; my neighborhood was under the airport's approach patterns, and they pulled us out of class to see it land. It was the future!
The Shuttle is the Enterprise, the prototype used for glide tests in the late 1970s, which had been in storage at Dulles for years and years. Before that, for a while they had it out in the open to make people wonder what it was doing there when they spotted it from the air or the taxiway. I also remember seeing the Enterprise come in: they flew it to Dulles by carrier 747 when I was a senior in high school, and I saw it from the school bus. You can't actually walk right up to it at the moment; it's covered with scaffolding—apparently it wasn't possible to start serious restoration work on it until it was moved out of the old hangar at the airport to the Udvar-Hazy Center. Also, a few pieces of it were removed so NASA could use them for the Columbia accident investigation.
The Enterprise is in the stem of the T, called the Space Hangar. It's currently blocked off, so that you can just walk up to it and look inside, and its interior is unfinished except for a few objects displayed near the railing, such as a Gemini and a Mercury capsule. They've got some more objects that will eventually go there in a corner of the larger Aviation Hangar, such as some Spacelab modules that flew on the Shuttle, a backup of a gigantic Soviet Venus/Halley probe, some spacesuits and whatnot, and, incongruously, a prop from Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
The Aviation Hangar is all open to visitors. There's a heavier emphasis on military aviation than at the Mall facility; in particular, there's a lot more stuff from the Cold War and the Korea and Vietnam wars, and some modern military equipment. Even with all the airliners, bombers, cruise missiles and stunt planes inside it, it feels as if there's a lot of unused space in there. They've clearly built in lots of room for expansion.
On the whole, while it's worth a visit for all the impressive huge things inside, it's not as engrossing a place as the Mall facility; it might not warrant a whole-day visit unless you're really into staring hard at airplanes, since I managed to see almost the entire collection in the couple of hours I had before closing. I expect it to become more interesting in coming years.
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It's a plane!
Date: 2004-08-16 05:45 am (UTC)But did you get to see the Vin Fiz Flyer?
Re: It's a plane!
Date: 2004-08-16 05:55 am (UTC)Re: It's a plane!
Date: 2004-08-16 06:11 am (UTC)Re: It's a plane!
Date: 2004-08-16 06:29 am (UTC)I also spent countless hours in my youth poring over C. D. B. Bryan's coffee-table book on the museum, so there may have been some planes that I'm familiar with because I saw them in that book.
But there are also some that I'm only familiar with from an illustrated paperback book on the history of aircraft that was one of my most prized possessions when I was a little kid. I got a thrill at the new building seeing the Crosley Flying Flea (http://www.nasm.si.edu/research/aero/aircraft/mignet.htm), a strange-looking and treacherous tiny kit plane that was popular in the 1930s; I remember that old book talking about the Flea.
no subject
Date: 2004-08-16 06:05 am (UTC)Courtesy of the Grand Lunar
Date: 2004-08-16 04:54 pm (UTC)