Destination Moon (or at least Tukwila, WA)

[Janus]

Drove up today to The Museum of Flight in Tukwila, WA ( a 3 hour drive) to see their temporary exhibit to honor the anniversary of the Moon landing.

First up, Major Matt Mason! They had a collection of space related toys from the time, and I couldn't resist snapping a photo, as I had one as a kid.

Now on the right stuff...

A pair of gloves made for the Gemini missions.

Gordon's jumpsuit from Gemini XI

A section of a Mission control panel.

A close up of a part of the panel. Check out that high tech rotary phone dial!

More photos in the next post

 

[Janus]

Continuing on: A full scale Saturn V rocket engine

An example of new and ablated heat shield material

These are Buzz Aldrin's Extravehicular visor and Gloves

Viewed through a magnifier, you can see the "cheat sheet" of duties printed on the glove.

A honest to goodness Moon rock ( sorry about the blurred image, the lighting was fairly dim and they didn't allow flash. As a result it was hard to hold the phone steady enough while focusing through glass to get a good picture. On top of that, my phone battery was dying a lot faster than it should and I was afraid to spend too much time on getting a picture of any given thing.

 

[Janus]

Okay, now we get to what I really drove 3 hrs to see. The actual Apollo 11, command module Columbia:

Right there, just a couple of feet away with nothing between it and me but air was the actual craft that carried men to the Moon and back!

Here's a close up of some of the detail. Your can see the same hexagon pattern as was in the sample of heat shield material in the earlier photo.

Well worth the trip. My wife had read about this exhibit in the AAA magazine, It's been there since April and Leaves next Month. There was no mention of it coming to any place closer to us, so we thought we'd kick ourselves if we missed the chance.

 

[Tom.G]

Here is a 're-focused' copy of the Moon rock in post #2. The image seems to have been out of focus with a smear of 7 pixels.

 

[Janus]

Here is a 're-focused' copy of the Moon rock in post #2. The image seems to have been out of focus with a smear of 7 pixels.

I was able to to through the photos my wife took. She has a better camera on her phone and wasn't having the battery issues I was.

She got a much better picture of the Lunar rock sample than I did

She also got a better shot of the interior side of the Columbia hatch. ( mine came out so blurry it wasn't worth keeping).