Smithsonian’s National Air & Space Museum
We had a wonderful visit to the Smithsonian’s National Air & Space Museum at Washington D.C. It is free for view. It is dedicated to the human flight and space exploration. It represents the historical development of science of spaceflight and Aviation as well as planetary science. This museum came into being in 1946 by the act passed and signed by the President Harry S Truman. It displays so many models of air crafts right from the time man entered into the air and also various air crafts used for civil use as well as for war purposes. Even a standard visit of the museum requires minimum 2- 4 hours. It is so big and so many variety of items are on display that you feel a need to spare more time to see everything in details. We can see the birth of military aviation during the World War One.The main museum on the mall includes 61 aircraft, 51 large space artifacts, over 2,000 smaller items as of June 1, 2007.
Wilbur and Orville Wright invented a successful airplane quickly and with little help that might suggest sheer genius were at work. Certainly the brothers were very talented and bright. They were just a bicycle mechanics, working nearly alone and with little formal scientific training , solve a problem as different as heavier than air flight. The brothers spent four years of research and development to create the first successful powered aeroplane. The Wright Brothers built bicycles before inventing the airplane. They borrowed some ideas from bicycles, like the chain and sprocket concept to link the engine and the propellers.
The Wright brothers inaugurated the aerial age with the world’s first successful flights of a powered heavier-than-air flying machine. The Wright Flyer was the product of a sophisticated four-year program of research and development conducted by Wilbur and Orville Wright beginning in 1899. After building and testing three full-sized gliders, the Wrights’ first powered airplane flew at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, on December 17, 1903, making a 12-second flight, traveling 36 m (120 ft), with Orville piloting. The best flight of the day, with Wilbur at the controls, covered 255.6 m (852 ft) in 59 seconds.
The Wrights pioneered many of the basic tenets and techniques of modern aeronautical engineering, such as the use of a wind tunnel and flight testing as design tools. Their seminal accomplishment encompassed not only the breakthrough first flight of an airplane, but also the equally important achievement of establishing the foundation of aeronautical engineering
The Museum’s collection of 30 World War II-era American military aircraft ranges from propeller-driven trainers, fighters, flying boats, and bombers to the nation’s first generation of jet-powered fighters to take to the air.
There we also saw the stone on display , which was brought by the crew members of Apollo 17, the last Apollo Lunar Mission as a sample brought to earth in December 1972. It is well preserved. You can have glimpses of it and also touch it from outside. You can see a sign board – Touch a piece of the Moon in the exhibition hall.
No comments:
Post a Comment