Our trip was for two days. Though we couldn't cover everything, we visited important presidential memorials, capitol building, the white house and air and space museum.
I thought Washington D.C would have sky scrappers like NYC but to my surprise they were not. Later I was told that according to a law "Heights of Buildings Act of 1910" the height of any building that is built in D.C could not be taller than the US capitol building. Hence D.C has "low and convenient" buildings with "light and airy" streets, keeping with Thomas Jefferson's wishes to make it "American Paris".We went on a guided tour on first day of our trip. It proved to be extremely informative. I think one must go on a guided tour to know the historical importance of all these memorials and monuments. We visited memorials of Roosevelt, Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, the war memorials of World War II, Korean war, Vietnam war and the Washington monument. (We visited few more places..but I forgot some..:P) Out of these my favorites were the Roosevelt and Lincoln memorials. The war memorials were disturbing and I didn't understand who gained from those wars....
Air and Space Museum
Next day we went to Smithsonian Air and space museum. Even here we took a guided tour and it was soooo interesting that we ended up spending half of the day here.. I saw rockets and missiles from U.S.A and U.S.S.R, touched a moon rock, saw several space capsules and the lunar module which Neil Armstrong and his friends used to get to the moon. we were also given a brief note on evolution of airplanes, supersonic airplanes and passenger air travel.
Some interesting facts
- There was an exhibit which compared German missile technology with that of the USA at the beginning of world war- II. German one was 100 times more capable than USA's!!!
- What astronomers eat?? They eat all preprocessed, crushed and vacuum packaged food so that it stays fresh for years.
- Space capsules are typically smaller, highly insulated and have an internal temperature of 70 F, even though its base temperature is around 7000 F.
- Neil Armstrong was initially not interested to get into Apollo project as lots of opportunities were open to him as a pilot. He was more interested in flying supersonic aircraft. Later after the success of various space capsules, he changed his mind and enrolled for space travel.
- Boeing is the largest aircraft manufacture. Boeing 747 the popular 'Jumbo jet' had a capacity of more than 2.5 times that of the largest capacity aircraft (Boeing 707) before it was introduced.
- Earlier airplanes were just used for mail delivery across the U.S. The first civilian passengers who flew were made to sit on mail bags.
- The Wright brothers never went to college and they used to run a bicycle repair shop before they invented an airplane! The main reason for their success was the design of controls which were required to maneuver an aircraft. This they were successful in implementing because of a sense of balance they had to ride a bicycle.
- R.H.Goddard was experimenting on how to design rocket and the first one went a few feet higher. A News paper made fun of his experiments with a head line which read "We are just 238857 miles far to land on moon!". Goddard ignored all these criticisms and with great dedication in 1920's he launched the first liquid fueled rocket. He is known to be the "Father of Rocketry". His principles were used in making missiles, rocket airplanes and most importantly in exploring outer space. Many of his patents were used by NASA in their effort to reach the moon later in the 60's.
- During world war II, there was a high demand for rubber and Germans used human hair as a substitute for rubber. There is an exhibit demanding hair from women as a contribution to the German war effort.
- Space shuttles have tires and do you think they are made with rubber and filled with air?? Nooooo...they are like our normal tires but they are made with metal springs.
Funny thing was I saw some kids sleeping on exhibits, rolling on floor and crying for their parents to take them out of this museum :) but like me all their parents were totally involved in watching all exhibits.
I have learnt a lot both from historical and scientific perspective and wanna go next time and visit what all I missed this time...
This trip was completely different and outstanding from all other trips i had been to.
