MVGS In Space
Blake Armstrong
We had a wonderful trip up to the Udvar-Hazy Air and Space museum, and the bus ride didn't feel too long! We played cards, avoided calculus, creeped on our teachers, but we mostly slept. 7:30 is too early whether it's a field trip day or not :)
P.S.-You must get cooler the farther back in the bus you sit, right?
As soon as we arrived at the Air and Space museum, we walked straight into the Imax theater. This is their screensaver there apparently, as we watched this as the lady made a few announcements and other things we all paid 100% attention to. Then the movie began. Not everyone found it that interesting, but I did, it included many computer generated terrains and predictions of the future in space life. Oh, and Imax screens are 6 stories tall. You feel very engaged when you actually have to move your head to see part of the movie :)
When the movie was over, we were broken up into groups of twelve to go on tours! We each had a teacher Chaperone (ours was Mr. John Dietrich himself) and one tour guide that new more about space than I know...period. Ours was Frank W...somethings or another, and he did a great job of letting us know what the typical group of museum kids were missing!
Our first stop was the famous space shuttle. We were informed that this one never flew, but was used for aerodynamic testing, and our tour guides told us what it would be like if it was real, such as the bajillion amount of newtons of thrust this thing could put out. That's alot of newtons. He also told us about the accidents that were encountered during the space shuttle area, and though sad, were extremely interesting.
Our next stop after the space shuttle was the secret SR-71 Blackbird. Probably the most famous of the stealth jets, Frank informed us much on the beast, including that the engines were built to take a beating, caused by sonicbooms when moving at over mach 3! That's 3 times the speed of sound!
I'm not really sure about the other tour groups, but in ours, our guide brought along a binder with pictures that he showed us throughtout the tour, better detailing what the specific plane or ship was all about, or helping us to understand a specific story or something spacey.
While the SR-71 was back during the Cold War era, we had the chance to learn about a more modern plane, the Concord! The biggest plane of its time, it was able to fly faster and longer than any other! Frank described to us many details and special things we would've never known without him, and I was able to catch video evidence of this plane in the clip below that shows its magnificent giant.
Concord Clip :)
Then we began learning about old stuff! Such as the famous Enola Gay, which dropped the Atomic bomb on Nagasaki during World War 2. Frank described to us how it actually prevented alot of Japanese and American deaths. He said that about (insert large number) people would die if the war continued and we were forced to invade Tokyo, but, if we dropped the bomb on them, only (insert still large number, but one that seems miniscule compared to the first one) would die! What another great choice on America's part! One last comment- Parker is The Bomb.
Finally on our tour, we got to learn about the origins of flight (backwards tour into time?) and our guide had amzing knowledge on the Wright brothers and the first planes. They proved that if you keep at something, you can eventually achieve perfection. Oh, and that some other guy from France tried to steal their fame and say he built the first Airplane. Silly French. Also, Frank passed out some buttons to our group that we could wear fashionably, and proudly let everyone know that we had "The Wright Experience" Sadly, our tour time was up, but I think we weren't too disappointed, considering we hadn't eaten in a while :)
Finally, after we had our tour of the place, we got some lunch at the local five star restaurant (McDonald's) and had some free time with friends of our choice :) this involved flight simulators, long elevator rides to the top of observation towers, and cool engines. Oh, and of course, lots of scientific talk about things.
