The Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center is located next to Dullus International Airport and is the larger of the two Smithsonian National Air and Space Museums. The facility is essentially one humongous hangar so they’re able to display a lot of the big aircraft that won’t fit in the smaller museum on the National Mall. This was my first time visiting the Udvar-Hazy center and I have to admit I was pretty awestruck by everything on display. I spent over 6 hours walking through the entire museum and both of my camera batteries and my phone battery were all dead from all the pictures I took. I decided to split them up into 4 parts so that the galleries wouldn’t be so daunting to work with and peruse. This first installment will cover some of the modern jet fighters and the James S. McDonnell Space Hangar. I’m going to keep the captions to a minimum since this isn’t my area of expertise and because I took pictures of most of the information plaques.
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- History channel has a special where they recreated one of these Fritz X bombs to test its effectiveness. It was pretty innovative for its time.
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- This fiberglass reinforced rocket engine looks like a scuba tank.
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- The bits of string are for aerodynamic testing. Anywhere there is turbulence, the string will flail wildly and be plain to see.
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- Models of various rockets.
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- Tomahawk cruise missle
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- The space shuttle Discovery is the feature attraction here along with some space probes, rockets and missiles.
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- This is the entrance to the James S. McDonnell Space Hangar which is a separate area from the main hangar.
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- They look like they belong in a retro futurist sci-fi movie.
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- This prototype space suit display was up against the back wall right before the Space Hangar.
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- It’s not until you get underneath it that you can see the oblique wing.
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- It’s hard to see the odd features of this NASA experimental aircraft from this view. I missed it the first time I saw it.
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- This is the view to the left once you get to the main hangar. Parts 3 and 4 will be photos of this area.
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- This is the view if you look to the right once you get to the main hangar. Most of the photos from part 1 will be from this area and the James S. McDonnell Space Hangar.
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- There is no admission fee, but it costs $15 to park in the lot.
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- This monument sits in front of the museum at the end of the National Aviation and Space Exploration Wall of Honor
Stay tuned for the rest of the pictures from the Udvar-Hazy center as well as pictures from the Air and Space Museum on the National Mall. If you check out the “Museums” tag, it’ll bring up the rest of my galleries like this including The Art of Video Games exhibit that I also visited while in DC.
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