D.C. 2 of 3: Through the eyes of a geek



The Smithsonian... wow. Especially for an aero-nerd such as myself, there's definitely enough there to keep one busy.



The actual Wright brothers' plane (albeit with new fabric covering the wings)



The actual re-entry capsule from Neil Armstrong & company's Apollo 11 mission to the moon



Me standing in front of space shuttle Enterprise (never launched into space, but used for all sorts of atmospheric flight tests pre-Columbia)



SpaceShip 1, the very first commercial craft to technically make it into space

The Air & Space Museum also has a little bit of moon rock you can touch, while the Natural History Museum lets you smear a bit of fingerprint oil onto a Mars rock. Interesting, given that none of the Mars landing missions have ever sent anything back to Earth. The theory goes that some of the meteorites that have fallen to Earth were expelled from Mars during large cosmic impacts. The display presents evidence that is pretty convincing... especially to someone who's keen to touch a Mars rock, I suppose.

The Natural History Museum also has all sorts of neat dinosaur bones and whatnot.



The museum actually presents a very rigourous telling of the story of evolution (ie. natural HISTORY), which surprised me a little given that less than half of Americans believe in evolution in any form. I guess you can't always do everything democratically, or else it might have been named The Museum of Scientific Lies and Fantasies.