It wasn’t the best weather this week and so when my fieldtrip day came around on Wednesday I decided I’d better do something indoors for fear of rain. I took the metro to L`Enfant station and got completely lost coming up from below ground (nothing was clearly marked and when I walked up I had no idea where to go) but eventually found my way around and headed to the Air and Space museum.
When I came around the corner I couldn’t believe the humongously massive building that was the museum. It took up an entire block and was just enormous in structure. I had a woman take a picture of me with the museum sign and was once again disappointed when she cut off half of it (maybe one day people will figure it out) and then entered the front doors. I was immediately caught off guard but the masses of people. There were just swarms of people everywhere, mostly middle school groups, groups of business men that looked like scientists of some sort, tour groups of elderly people, and everything in between that I almost didn’t know what to do for a second. I found myself a map and decided to just start on the ground level, work myself around that floor, and then head up stairs.
Quickly I realized how big this museum really was and how much there was to see. There were a dozen or so individual exhibits in different rooms all with life-size models, boards explaining how everything works, movies and sound bites, and so much more.
I promised myself when I began all these field trips that I would take the time to read and learn what was before me. I didn’t want to just walk through and say I saw everything, I wanted to understand and learn and walk away with a new sense of understanding for each monument or museum and their history.
Once more I quickly realized that to read and try to understand everything in this museum would take WEEKS. I got through the first room trying to read everything and it took me almost a half hour! And there were a dozen left to go! Well scratch my plan of reading everything. You could stay in there for days on end and never get through everything. I decided just to skim and try to get an overall picture…..and besides, I’m not a rocket scientist (science never was my strength) and I didn’t understand all the technicalities so skimming and absorbing as much as I could from the surroundings was just fine for me.
I found that a little while into my excursion I was extremely bothered by the thousands of young, middle school, smelly, and inconsiderate kids running and yelling around me. Here I was trying to be intellectual and appreciative and smart and mature and considerate of the material in front of me and all I could focus on was the silliness of the boys and girls running around. Eventually I was able to zoom them out and my experience got a lot better.
I made some notes from the exhibits I liked and here’s what I learned:
-Pluto’s not officially a planet anymore- yeah I know, when did that happen? I knew there was some debate but I saw the words plain and clear. It’s not a planet anymore. My kids will grow up learning a solar system which won’t include Pluto. That feels a little weird.
-Everything is A LOT bigger than on tv. I mean, geez, I saw parts of space ships that were displayed in the air above us and I couldn’t get over the size of everything. Just to get a couple of men into space requires equipment that is enormous. I’ve had a recurring dream several times in my life where I’m in a space shuttle and taking off for the moon. I’ve always wanted to be able to sit in a cockpit of a shuttle and although I didn’t get to at the museum just seeing one from the outside was really pretty cool to me.
- I loved the display of the different Gemini and Apollo missions. It was cool to read what was accomplished during each one, see the pictures of the astronauts, and look at some of their actual equipment that they had in space. I saw the famous white vest that Gene Kranz wore during the Apollo 13 mission, Buzz Aldrin’s space suit, and a pressurized pen that they used to write notes and letter with in orbit. So cool! (you can tell by now that I liked the whole space aspect of the museum more than the plane side)
- I also really enjoyed the pictures of nebulas and stars taken by the Hubble telescope. Their color and detail was astounding and to think that several of these objects are thousands of light-years away and the Hubble can still take pictures of them blew my mind. I remember being in elementary school and going to a presentation about space and being so amazed by what’s out there and by what we don’t know. There’s just so much we don’t know and so much that’s too far away for us to study. I can’t think about it too much or too deeply or else I go crazy.
Cat's Eye Nebula
After two hours I was ready to leave having learned a great deal. Although I probably read only a small percentage of the boards and posters I feel like I found a couple things that really interested me and made me think a little deeper. It was a successful personal field trip indeed!
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