November 17, 2013

A Visit With Udvar-Hazy




The Udvar-Hazy Museum that is. The Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC wanted to expand their collection and years ago they added the Udvar Hazy Museum near Dulles airport for the majority of their planes.

Some friends from Beaver are posted here for training too and we met them at the museum. It was fun to have a bit of home, away from home. Their kids are older too and watching them soak in the education and sites was totally worth it. The museum has a space suit for kids to touch and learn about and there are educational games all over. You can try and land a simulated space pod with a joist stick or test your knowledge on the order of the planets in our galaxy.

This museum, named after the man that donated the money to build it, is a massive airplane hangar that houses, according to their website, 60,000 pieces. Many of them are planes. Some of these planes include iconic and historical planes throughout history. From the celebrated Stealth Fighter and its sleek black wings and the Enola Gay that dropped atomic bombs to the enormous Discovery Shuttle that dominates on entire wing of the museum.







As we saw hundreds of planes—war planes, prototype planes, helicopters, planes that doubled as cars—I couldn’t help think that flying is such a part of our era I cannot imagine only a few years prior only the military had planes and before the Wright Brother’s Kittyhawk there were only birds in the sky. What was life like? The world must have been so dauntingly huge.  I guess that is similar to our children growing up thinking “People didn’t ALWAYS have cell phones? What was the world like?” haha.





Speaking of cell phones, I am glad that took mine. As Lady and I perused the area and we had more questions about a certain artifact or plane we would just Google the answers. For example, when we were staring up at the big space shuttle that carried several missions to space, we found out what the black tiles along the bottom of the shuttle were made of (quartz sand) and that there are more than 23,000 of them! Can you imagine trying to piece all of them together?








It was a great day. Always nice to have some history and science on a day trip!
This is how Lucky enjoyed the trip

He is getting so big! (and handsome)

Seriously reading how Christmas is about Jesus...not the presents


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