alchemicink

Before we left Washington DC after our brief but packed visit, my colleague and I paid a visit to the Smithsonian’s National Air & Space Museum. We decided to walk from where we were staying, forgetting that the park around the capitol was completely blocked off for the fair. This turned what would have been a 13-minute walk in the sweltering heat into 35-minute walk in said heat. By the time we got to the museum queue, which stretched beyond the shade of the building, we were melting.



At least we had an odd aerobatics display involving parachutes and upside-down flags to entertain us while we queued.



Happy, happy nerds, who have successful achieved museum entry. And air conditioning. Blessed, blessed air conditioning.



Lunar module LM-2 feet. Gold on the outer side, black on the inner side facing the main engine exhaust. Thermal management!



Aforementioned LM-2 main engine.



LM2 from above.



Pioneer!



CubeSats.



The excellent little Sorato rover, developed by the Japanese company ispace, which sadly hasn’t flown.



IceCube neutrino observatory.



So many treasures in the space hall.



This still blows my mind. These holes are where the debris impact craters were drilled out and studied when Hubble’s original Wide Field Camera was removed and replaced, and the flawed camera returned to Earth.



Delighted colleague with Hubble’s backup mirror.



Dava Newman’s spacesuit.



The aftermath of 16 years in space.



Telstar. Fantastic little spacecraft. Most excellent cat (RIP Telly).

Epilogue: I didn’t end up replacing my SR-71 blackbird hoodie, because I thought most of the designs in the shop were rather tacky. Everything’s gone to these big screen-printed images that take up the entire front or back (or both) of the item. My old hoodie just had an attractive sewn logo on the top left side on the front. I settled for a t-shirt that had a similar printed logo on the front.