We are poor little lambs,who have lost our way... Baa Baa Baa  

...in its own special area is the Space Shuttle Enterprise. This model never flew in space. This was the model that was used to test the glide capabilities of the Shuttle. Flown aloft piggy back on a specially made 747 it made several test flights in the late '70s before the maiden voyage of the Columbia on April 12th, 1981. It's HUGE! Boy what I wouldn't give to go for a ride on the real thing. April 12th is a special day for another reason also: it's my nephew Cole's birthday.

The Enola Gay. The first, of only two, aircraft to drop an atomic weapon in anger. This is the actual plane that dropped the atomic bomb, code named "Little Boy", on Hiroshima, Japan August 6, 1945. The pilot's name was Col Paul Tibbets. To give you an idea of the incredible power of not just the bomb but of the power that binds the components of an atom together consider this: The business end of the bomb used only a little over 64 kilograms (about 141 lbs) of uranium to do it's thing. Now, there are really only two types of stuff in the universe: mass or energy. That's really it, and as you may have heard E=MC2 E=MC2--what does that mean? It means that the amount of energy in something (E) is equal to it's mass (M) times the speed of light squared (C2). Basically what it means is there is a tremendous amount of energy in all matter...IF (big if) you can rip the atomic shell apart to release it. For almost all elements this is very, very hard to do (by hard I mean impossible really); but some elements lend themselves to this process more easily than others, like uranium. Little Boy detonated at 1,980 ft above Hiroshima that morning as inside the bomb casing a 25.6 kg slug of uranium was fired down a short barrel into a 38.5 kg target of uranium. The collision between the two 'halves' of uranium instantaneously reached critical mass--converting a mere 600 grams of uranium into pure energy. The act of ripping loose those 600 grams (about 21 oz by weight) worth of protons, electrons and neutrons is what caused the massive heat, radiation and explosion. Think about that. The destruction of an entire city was caused by nothing more than a pound or so of nuclei that went out for ice cream and never came back. Three days later Fat Man, a second atomic device, was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan. Six days after that, on August 15th, 1945 Japan surrendered ending World War II. Those 600 grams of split particles, and their cousins at Nagasaki, saved the lives of an estimated 1 million US soldiers.

F-35 Lightning II -- The Joint Strike Fighter

The beautiful Pan Am Clipper "Flying Cloud" . All of Pan Am's planes were named Clipper this or Clipper that. This is a Boeing 307 Stratoliner and was the largest land-based airliner in its day. It was the first pressurized airliner to go into production. This picture doesn't do the plane justice. It's all sliver, sleek and futuristic looking (even with props instead of jet engines). It looks like something from a science fiction movie. I think it was the best looking plane in the hanger.

This necklace was a gift from Napoleon as well. Yes, those are diamonds.

I have no idea what building this is. When I got off the metro I had to wait more than a half an hour for the shuttle back to the hotel. While I was waiting the sun was going down, and as it caught the corner of this building it bathed it in this warm beautiful light which really made it stand out against the brilliant blue September sky. I was still taking pictures when the tram arrived. This was my favorite of the bunch.

At the opposite end of the National Mall from the Washington Monument stands the Capitol Building. Some of the strangest and most deadly creatures on the planet skulk their way through it's halls, and like the man once said: "...you will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy." Interesting note: If you look very closely you can see Nancy Pelosi's broom parked near the curb.

Marie Antoinette's Earrings: given to the United States by Napoleon

The Washington Monument: Millions of people have taken this very same picture. This one is mine.

This rock is from the surface of the Moon. How cool is that?

The massive F1 rocket engine by Rocketdyne. How powerful is this beast? Just the fuel pump for this thing by itself has 55, 000 horsepower. 55,000 horsepower just to sling the gas to this monster. It has to. The F-1 burns 40,000 gallons of fuel a minute. To give you an idea of how much liquid that is--it would empty the average size backyard pool in 15 seconds. Just how much power is produced by 40,000 gallons of kerosene and liquid oxygen a minute when they meet inside the F-1? 160,000,000 horses worth. This one engine is as powerful as all three engines on the back of the Space Shuttle. The Saturn V used 5 of these just in the first stage alone. If you haven't guessed the Saturn V, still to this day, is the most powerful device ever created by man--with the exception of compound interest.

A mock up of a Lunar Lander. It's HUGE! Much bigger in real life than I expected. No wonder the Saturn V rocket had to be such an incredibly powerful machine. It had get this thing, the Command Module, 3 men, all their food, water, and fuel for almost two weeks up to 25,000 mph in order to break the pull of the Earth's gravity and reach the Moon.

DC-3 Starboard side

THE Wright Brother's Flyer. Again another very moving sight for me. The Flyer itself is so very well maintained it's hard to believe it's almost 106 years old. To me it looks like something that DaVinci designed come to life. Less like an machine, and more like a great work of the art.

THE Apollo 11 Command Module. This is the actual capsule that took Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins to the moon. The real thing. I don't know how long I stood in this spot awestruck before I remembered to take a picture.

The iconic Douglas DC-3