Marc's Public Blog - Flying

We showed up at 10:30, a little late (opens at 10:00) because we spent more time than expected visiting the Cathedral in Washington, and we arrived just in time for a volunteer led tour that was absolutely fantastic. He spent 3h45 with us to show us just a portion of their amazing collection, and he really knew space stuff since he worked at NASA before retiring.

We started with a collection of very early planes, including one before the Wright Flyers' which never managed to fly: the Langley Aerodrome A.

look at this plane. It never flew but sure looked cool.

gunner station, bad ass!

4 rudders!

many early French planes

Then, we went to see other pieces of the collection:

Enola Gay was the superfortress that dropped the atom bomb on Hiroshima

They also had rare Japanese and German planes:

dual prop plane with pusher prop

A japanese cruise missile that was actually piloted by a kamikaze

Messerschmitt Komet plane with a propellor to run a generator

Finally we went to the space hangar and our volunteer talked to us about the space shuttle. They have discovery, the last one that flew.

The tracking and data relay satellite that allowed coms with the space shuttle

And we looked at more space artifacts and satellites

Vega Solar System Probe

Mercury Capsule

A concept of gliding wing to land capsules on ground instead of sea

That was a whole 3H45. By then, our guide parted ways with us, with many thanks for his excellent tour. Next, I went to check out the missile and rocket section:

an early drone (KD2C-2 Skeet Target)

OMG, this looks weird

And more things, still, the main hangar is huge:

An F35 with its engine, very cool

but wait, there's more...

I also went to the watch tower where you can see planes landing at IAD:

And that was it. Many pictures on this page, but only a small sample of the 500+ pictures I took there. I barely got to see everything in a day, and quite frankly to visit carefully, you really need 2 days.
This place is one of a kind, it totally deserves a stop in IAD when you're flying by washington, it's that good. Also, you may get plane fatigue after a while, because of how many artifacts they have. Either way, it's a do not miss.

Then, you need at least another full day to see the much bigger Smithsonian Air and Space Museum by Washington Dulles (IAD)

google has the copy, they have the real one :)

US and Russian capsule rendez-vous

X-15, the first prototype to fly to space before rockets

Bell X-1

747 cockpit

skylab, before the space station

Howard Hughes' speed record plane

The actual voyager plane that went around the world

great way to show how a modern telescope works

These few pictures do not give it justice, the amount of history of aviation, space, including what happend to other countries, how GPS works and why, how the moon landings were done, and how we're going to Mars now, it's a lot of information.
I guess that's expected, but it is indeed bar none the best such museum I've seen in the world so far.