National Air and Space Museum

The Smithsonian institution is a great old institution originally funded by an English man who had never been to the USA. Today the National Mall in Washington is lined by several museums from the Smithsonian. One of the noteworthy once is the Air and Space museum.

Since it is a part of the Smithsonian the entrance fee is set at a very reasonable zero dollars. And you can just walk in from the street to enjoy the place. When you go to explore you got the option just to see the main highlights or spend a long time exploring the different exhibitions.

One great thing about the museum is - it has gathered all the main highlights - and put them in the same spot. This incidentally is the room you will enter if you go into the museum from the National Mall. In this room is the Spirit of Saint Louis (the first plane to cross the Atlantic non-stop), Glamourous Glennis - the first supersonic aircraft in the world, X-15 the fastest plane ever and the Apollo 11 space capsule. If you only interested in these things you don't have to spend more than a few minutes in the museum and you have seen them all.

If you want to learn more about the Wright brother's first flight, the exploration of space or what exactly a V1-rocket look like you can spend hours learning more about these things.

Is really the place to go if you want to see the evaluation and conquest of the universe. Wen i was there (01-2002) it was free entrance.

If you have even a passing interest in aviation or space travel the National Air and Space Museum is a must see! If you hate museums, you will still find something to your liking!

As soon as you walk into the grand entry hall, called Milestones of Flight, (Mall Entrance) you are instantly assaulted (in a good way!), by a cornucopia of aeronautical history. Hanging from the ceiling, daring you to actually believe it, is the Spirit of St Louis (the plane Charles Lindberg flew solo across the Atlantic), the Bell X-1 (the jet that Chuck Yeager flew to first break the sound barrier), and Columbia (the first craft to go to the moon and back, carrying Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins). Plus you will find a display with a sliver of a moon rock, which you can actually touch. I believe this is one of only two places in the world (Kennedy Space Center) that you can do that.

This just gets you started. In the World War II Aviation gallery you will find the most famous fighters from three different WW II countries; the Spitfire, Messerschmitt, and Mustang.

This gallery is too small to hold the best known fighters from the entire war, so the Sea-Air Operations helps out. This gallery is a recreation of a US aircraft carrier (part of one, anyway) and in addition to the Wildcat and Dauntless dive bomber you can learn about an air craft carrier at the bridge, a recreation of a flight control center.

And it goes on and on; The Early Flight gallery with the Wright Brothers 1903 Flyer; The Space Race gallery with German V-1 & V-2 missiles, plus a modern Tomahawk cruise missile; The Jet Aviation gallery with a ME-262 Swallow, the first jet fighter, and on and on and one. The Eveready Bunny has nothing on this museum.

It is open 364 days a year (Closed on Christmas) from 10:00 AM to 5:30 PM. Admission is FREE! There is no parking and find a spot near the National Mall has lottery type odds. Take the Metro and get off at the Smithsonian stop and save yourself the headache.

Don’t miss this museum!

Here you can see everything from Wrights brothers machines to latest NASA thing. It is quit interesting museum, even I liked it and normally I couldn´s care less about all this machines. But here you can see for example Spirit of St. Louis, the plane which made first nonstop tranatlantic flight. You can see Apollo 11 command module and other space stuff obviously:D

There is planes from every decades and every sizes. And the exhibitions will change time to time. So there is always something new to explore.