We visited one of the holy grails of aviation buffs; the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center. It is a large hangar at the Dulles International Airport. It is the place where the bigger things that can’t fit in and the things that don’t have a place in the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum on the capital mall get put on displace.
Upside down plane is upside down.
An SR-71 Blackbird. You can get much more up close and personal with the SR-70 at the Evergreen Air and Space Museum.
This place is HUGE! I hope that they start cramming more planes into this place in the near future. The Smithsonian has to have quite a few additional planes in storage.
On the military aircraft side of the hangar.
This is an incredible piece of technology. It is a jet engine and turbofan assembly from a STOVL test aircraft that was the forerunner of the Joint Strike Fighter that will be used by the Navy.
I love the looks of this old Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star.
A MiG-15.
Space suit concepts.
A Loon Missile derived from a V-1 Vergeltungswaffe.
A Messerschmitt Me 163 B-1a Komet in its original unrestored state.
The Space Shuttle Discovery. It was just recently moved into the spot that the Enterprise used to occupy.
A wooden rocket!
Engines on display.
Me standing under the port wing of the Discovery.
The business end of the Space Shuttle Discovery.
Wheels and very expensive tiles.
Each one is unique and went into space.
Space-themed telephone booth and R2-D2 post office box.
A TDRSS mock-up hanging over the Discovery along with a few other satellites.
Heather and me on the raised platform behind Discovery.
Lots of little satellites!
Closeup of the TDRSS.
The restoration hangar.
A Saturn 5 instrumentation and guidance ring.
Discovery in her final resting place.
A space suit floating above the shuttle.
Space capsule.
If only any country in the world had something to replace and surpass the shuttle program. Someday…
Hang glider concept for a space capsule return. For those astronauts afraid of water?
Apollo capsule setup for a water landing.
My what a big nose you have!
It was absolutely incredible how few people there were at this museum. We nearly had the entire place to ourselves!
The Mobile Quarantine Facility built out of an Airstream to keep space germs from infecting Planet Earth.
An early prototype of Commander Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation?
Biplanes from the early days of flight.
Langley’s attempt at an airplane.
A fully little flying wing.
The only J1N1-S Gekkou in existence.
The Kugisho MXY7 Ohka Model 22, a suicide rocket plane meant to disrupt shipping.
The Smithsonian is like a who’s who of extremely rare Japanese and German aircraft from World War II.
Pieces waiting for something to happen.
A Nazi glider.
Lots of hang gliders in this part of the hangar.
That little plane doesn’t look particularly safe.
A predecessor to the V-22 Osprey. The Concorde is hiding in the background.
A plane car.
Nose of the Concorde.
Helicopters and autogyros.
This place is very big!
The Virgin Atlantic Global Flier.
An old Pan Am plane.
Bud Light was well-represented in the hangar.
The Enola Gay, the first plane to drop an atomic bomb in war.
The Enola Gay from another angle.
The Boeing 367-80, prototype to the 707.
Old school jet engines.
The Clipper Flying Cloud.
A helicopter that flew around the world. I saw another helicopter that flew around the world in Australia a few years ago.
The interesting thing is that there is a helicopter in Australia that makes the same claim. Dick Smith flew it in 1982. The difference is he did it solo where this helicopter had a couple people in it. I think I will celebrate Dick Smith rather than Ross Perot Junior.
A very old and very historic blimp cockpit.
Mementos from the ballooning days.
There was even a banjo from the early days of airplanes! I do believe Zach should be made aware of this…
Pepsi had a nice product placement, too.
Another banjo. Zach, do you have your DC-3 certification yet?
This place sure is amazing!
