What-What?! Week of September 8th

More photos from the Museum of Flight!

Boeing Model 100 (1928)

Stearman C-3B (1927)

 

A MIG of some sort -- I don't have notes for this one.  The Coast Guard helicopter in the background was really cool too -- you can go upstairs and get a much closer look than from down here.

Plaaaaaanes!

Lego Saturn V rocket -- the kids were really excited to see this!

Ejector seat

Cockpit of the Boeing 737

Same, but the picture taken from above the glass divider

Bugs!  There was a whole section on how flight works in general, including birds, bugs, etc.

Oh, and dinosaurs.

From WWII exhibit

This reads "James Munn wrote this check to buy a gun from one of the camp guards.  His bank in California called his mother to come and verify that he had written and got her okay to pay it.  Note the check is for "value received". (Jame Munn was a POW in Germany)  1944

WWI -- Capron Ca 20.  According to the display, this plane is very close to the original condition, and has never been recovered with newer material; the fabric on it is the better part of a century old.  This was before interlocks to synchronize the gun with the propeller had been developed, so you can kind of see the gun mounting that's practically on stilts.

This was a very difficult flight simulator game.

This reads: "Clarence Fry is funnier than ever.  He was telling a story on Barksdale about how he went over in a Pup to stunt for his girl.  He came out of a spin below the tree tops and couldn't get his motor again and crashed right in her yard."  The whole WWI section had a lot of personal anecdotes from the pilots, which was really fascinating.

And that's it.  Just think, all that and we still haven't been across the street!  Next time, next time...

What-What?! Week of September 1st

This past week, we took the family to the Museum of Flight south of Seattle, to see the Destination Moon: The Apollo 11 Mission exhibit, featuring the actual command module from the Apollo 11 mission.  We spent the entire day at the museum, but still haven't seen some significant portions of it -- there's an entire section across the street that we never made it to.

Moon globe is globe of moon

Model of the moon rover

I thought the structure of the tires was pretty interesting -- a wire mesh over a ribbed structure.

Liberty Bell model

All the BUTTONS!

Hard to see from this picture, but the center top button has handwritten "Spare"

Status buttons for the go/no go signals

I have not read about these ladies yet, but it's now on my to-do list!

Model engine from a Saturn V rocket

John Young's spacesuit

This is a switch on the life support backpacks astronauts wore for excursions

Looking through the door of the command module

Burnination!

Survival kit

This was very cool -- on the right is an unused heat shield tile, and on the left is a used one.  The lighting in this part of the exhibit was terrible, so please pardon the quality :(

Oz was excited to see this -- the largest piece of space rock brought back from the moon

Just outside of the exhibit is a kids area, with a ton of cool features, including this set of play consoles.

Just sitting down at the flight director's console...

One of the other cool features was this lunar module game -- you have to land it on the moon!  The husband and Saffron crashed theirs into the surface, while I sent mine into space.  Whoops!

I do actually have a ton more photos to post, but I'm going to hang on to the next set and post them next week -- from the WWI and WWII exhibits, as well as the main room.