We were unable to visit the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, because of a COVID event. So we went to the Steven Udvar-Hazy Center of the National Air & Space Museum–which is the remote but huge collection of air and spacecraft.
SR-71 Blackbird. It still looks like a science-fiction vehicle to me.Oh! Look at those nacelles!Sobering reminder of the evolution of aerial warfare: SR-71 and the General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper drone. With anti-tank Hellfire missiles mounted on its racks.Apparently this SR-71 specimen is very cleaned up. Normally when they cool down to room temperature the hull plating contracts, leaving significant gaps where fuel leaked through. A student who is an Air Force vet told me that the stains from massive fuel-drippings are still visible at Edwards Air Force Base.From every angle, the SR-71 just looks otherworldly.Another sobering reminder of cutting-edge tech innovation provoked by warfare. The B-29 Stratofortress was a massive step up from the B-17; it flew so high the crew had to wear pressure-suits. Curtis LeMay also used these planes to incinerate more than 60 Japanese cities. And this particular one, the Enola Gay, carried the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.Like many space-enthusiasts, I have very mixed feelings about the shuttle program. Nixon asked the wrong question to NASA engineers: “Can you make it work?” Since he was their boss, they answered “Yes” rather than propose a better question: “Should we go with this overall design concept?”A combination of heavy lift vehicle and crewed vehicle — that also had to be reusable — the 3-priority concept resulted in an extremely complex design. Thousands of unique heat tiles made maintenance extremely expensive and slow.The Aerojet Rockedyne RS-25 engines are an astounding achievement: highly efficient all the way from sea level to orbital vacuum. The heavy reinforcing ribs on the nozzles prevented them from shattering at low altitude where 1-bar air pressure caused incursion into the bell. The design is a brilliant response to a poor requirement: a configuration requiring the same engines to operate during this full range of conditions from surface to orbit.Getting the engines back was smart, because they are costly (which is why throwing away these same engines in the SLS design is even more foolish). But retrieving them meant including them in the orbiter, and piping massive amounts of cryogenic fuel to them through transfer pipes from the booster tank. Yikes. Above: booster transfer-coupling hatch open, with landing gear hatches open and gear deployed.Hopefully we will learn valuable lessons from this design: the much simpler thermal protection system for the SpaceX Starship, the retrieval of engines separately in the ULA Vulcan design, and the benefits of separating the heavy-lift vehicles from the human crewed vehicles.The massive step up in size from the early-1960s Mercury capsule to the mid-1970s Shuttle Orbiter is apparent.Saturn V service ring. Just after liftoff, Apollo 12 was struck twice by lightning, causing a main bus over-volt that sent all of the instruments haywire inside the Command Module. Look up “SCE to AUX” to learn that hair-raising story! However, the avionics control of the main booster (part of which is shown here) withstood that massive surge of electricity, and the rocket continued to fly smoothly. Respect. Lizzie rightly notes that the Smithsonian gift shop should sell a set of replicas of all these satellites as Christmas-tree ornaments.I really enjoy the cultural history of this exhibit.And I am sooo pleased that they still have the African-American Astronaut Barbie doll on display! I understand that it could be seen as Blacksploitation stereotyping. But it could also be seen as Afro-futurism! If Parliament or other funkadelic bands had designed our spacesuits, they would not have looked like off-white wrinkly bags! We could still do this. We have better tech now, to make our suits actually fashionable.And I believe this is an addition since my last visit: the Mother Ship from Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Epic model. There are many easter-eggs included in this model, not visible from this angle. Please visit the museum to spot them yourself!
