Yesterday, we had plans to visit the zoo, but we woke up and it was rainy and below 40 degrees. Instead we visited the National Air and Space Museum located outside Chantilly, Virginia. (For all of mama's old colleagues, not only were we in Chantilly, but we we even drove by the Vienna lab.)
We didn't know this museum existed, but Miss ndrea said it was well worth seeing.
when we walked into thehanger, we saw the world's fastest jet propelled aircraft. This plane set the world record for the fastest flight from LA to New York (1 hour and 4 minutes). After it set the record, it was immediately flown to Dulles Airport and given to the Smithsonian.
This is the Mars Pathfinder prototype. Henry said that there's a little car on top of it that can drive into caves, but that it's not moving now because it doesn't have any batteries.
This German missile has wood fins
We got to see the Space Shuttle Enterpise! It was huge! Henry said it looked like Big Jet from Little Einsteins.
Mama was really impressed, especially when she considered how small this space shuttle looks when it is strapped to the rockets that launch it into space.
This is the capsule that brought the Apollo 11 astronauts back from space. Mama told PawPaw about a computer she saw that had 123 kilobytes of memory. Her camera has 4 gigabytes. PawPaw said that the calculator on his watch is more sophisticated than the computers that helped send those astronauts to the moon. It must have been very cool to be alive when that happened.
We don't know how relevant this is to space history- but there was also a replica of the mother ship from Close Encounters of the Third Kind. This means something. This is important.
This is a good shot of the views inside the museum. This museum was built outside of town to house all of the planes that were too big for the museum downtown. The Air France plane behind mama is the supersonic Concorde. It flew at twice the speed of sound. The Smithsonian wanted this plane so badly, in 1989 they got Air France to promise to give it to them when it was retired in 2003.
Roscoe Turner was a very famous air racer in the 1920s. He flew stunt planes in movies for Howard Hughes and was known for taking his pet lion Gilmore everywhere with him. (Coincidentally, the Smithsonian also has Gilmore preserved in their archives.) We hope Roscoe is related to us.
There was a section on experimental aircraft. Besides the backpack helicopters, we liked these teeny tiny airplanes that were designed to be driven on roads as well as flown. This one was even designed to look like a car and was painted "Buick Blue."
I had a great time on the elevated walkway, even though it was high enough to scare mama.
We were very glad that we stopped to check this museum out. Thanks for the tip Miss Andrea!
We spent the rest of yesterday driving back to Marion. We hit a pretty big snow storm on our way, but luckily it stopped snowing about halfway across Pennsylvania and didn't get icy until we got north of Columbus. Henry and I tried to be good in the car, although I kept dropping my blankie and crying for mama to pick it up until she actually buckled one of the loops into my car seat strap. Henry was a very good boy and watched movies all the way home until mama and papa told him at 11pm that it was time to go to sleep. We got to the Cooper's at 12:30 am and were both up until almost 2am. We spent today recovering in our pajamers and trying to catch up on sleep.
We were very excited to find Christmas presents under the tree, but Nama said we couldn't open any until Christmas. Mama says she's been like this for years. Henry's eyes welled up with tears and his lip quivered as his voice shook and he said, "But it IS Christmas." Nothing. Not even my funny Christmas hat softened her. Maybe if we publicly call for presents on our blog, she'll change her mind. Not likely.
