Taking Flight

Yesterday, some of the other interns and I decided to spend some time out on the town. Being physics nerds, of course our first stop was the Air and Space Museum! We decided to go on the free tour, which I'd never done, and learned a bunch of fun facts!

Here's the Rutan Voyager (photo stolen from the internet because I forgot to get one). It was the first plane to travel around the world without stopping or refueling in 1986. Its empty weight is only about 2200 lbs, but it took off with 7000 lbs of fuel! The crazy part? It landed with only a couple hundred to spare. Also, it was piloted by two people, Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager, who started the journey as a happily committed couple. When they emerged nine days later, they were no longer in such a state. Awkward.

Two of the very first commercial airplanes!

Here's the Spirit of St. Louis! Charles Lindbergh was one very brave, very crazy man. Part of the reason he was the first to make it across the Atlantic was that he took off in horrible weather, when all of the other pilots who were lined up were too afraid to. His plane was devoid of any equipment more complicated than a couple of sandwiches; he made his way across by eyeballing the waves to estimate wind speeds. Amazingly, he showed up off the coast of Ireland only three miles off course!

The Bell X-1, first plane to fly above Mach 1. It was piloted of course by Chuck Yeager. He had actually fallen off a horse a few days earlier, severely bruising and possibly breaking his ribs, but he refused to tell anyone that he was in too much pain to operate the plane properly. Instead, he worked secretly with one of the engineers to modify the plane (think, added a broom handle for extra leverage) so that he wouldn't lose his place as the first man to break the sound barrier.

Afterwards, we had a late lunch/early dinner on the Mall and walked around Chinatown for a bit. I absolutely love the variety of architecture you come across in D.C.-- everything's so eclectic, but somehow it all works!

We ended the evening by watching Wonder Woman, which I really enjoyed. There were some complaints that there wasn't enough character development, which I can see, but I would totally watch it again!!