Pima Air and Space Museum

Today we went on a little field trip. We took the boys to see "sleeping" airplanes.

They had a fun play area for the kids. The boys didn't want to get out of the old airplane cockpit that was so realistic for them. My boys kept yelling "DISENGAGE, DISENGAGE!" Referring to The Incredibles when Elasta Girl is yelling for the missiles to be disengaged from her jet as the target.
I do not remember what this plane (big blue one below) was called, but they say it is the last one of it's kind. It was huge! There was another plane similar, but was shaped exactly like a baluga (?) whale...well, a whale. it was crazy how many planes they had. ALMOST 300!


Then there was this awesome plane. It is an SR-71. It is the fastest plane out there. It goes 2200 miles an hour (3 or 3.5? times the speed of sound). It is made of titanium and was made to take pictures of enemy territory and was made to be so fast they couldn't shoot it down. It can go from Washington to D.C. to LA in 64 minutes. Can you tell I was impressed?

There was a lot more things that impressed me at this museum. We tried to join a tour group but after the first room we only lingered for the second room with them because we were the only people with kids and we couldn't really hear the tour guy over our kids begging us to go back and play in the fun room.

I was especially impressed with the imformation they gave us about the Wright brothers (Liz, any relation to you guys?). I had always thought their plane looked quite simple.


You can't see much from this picture, but the dark line leading to the plane was a track. It was 2x4s laid out for a runway. The plane had small metal wheels, made from the axel of a bicycle wheel. It also had a small engine, which they designed, equivalent to that of a lawn mower engine now a days. They had a some sort of a cooling chamber and a few other complicated things I forget now...The pilot had a stick (lever) in each hand that manuevered different parts of the plane and he wore a belt around his waist that would tweak the wings to help him turn...I think I got most of those details right. But regaurdless, you get the point. One other thing they did was wind tunnel testing. I think they had a wind tunnel made for testing. Their first flight was in the Wright Flyer I, on December 17th 1903.

So much has happened between now and then we really take for granted how much work was put into inventing planes we use all the time.

We barely got a glimpse of all the things this place has at it, but a few other things we saw were a space museum that had some fun things in it, and some presidential planes from the past. This one here below was for John F. Kennedy. It had his section near the back. It held a desk and a few couch seats for guests. Toward the middle was a section for the press, that had to pay $90 a seat. There were a few secret service spots, and a kitchen to cook fresh food for the president. The cook was a man from the service and then there was a flight crew of like 5 people.
There were some fun little planes in the first part of the museum that held records for things like the smallest jet ever, or the smallest wingspan, etc... (the smallest wingspan one was built to get into the Guiness Book of World Records, he had to hold the gas can in his lap it was so small!)
They also had a section for Arizona Aviation Hall of Fame. John McCain was one of many to have their picture and information about them displayed.


We had a really good day Saturday. We left the museum knowing we will see more of it soon, as it was too much for the boys to see all in one day, we will go back for more another weekend.

We did go and find a store downtown in Tucson that sells all the good food Chris ordered online last week to make dishes from Venezuela. I was even more excited to find it was right next to a children's second hand store! (one that I had been wanting to visit) So we went there too. :) Hope your weekend was a fun one!