Joani found the Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum was only about 30 miles away in McMinnville, OR, so we decided to see what it had to offer. As it turned out, I think it's been my favorite air and space museum so far. The museum campus included several large buildings including a water park. The two main buildings housed the air museum and the space museum. An IMAX theater was in yet another building. The grounds were well kept which was nice since there were a lot of displays outside as well.
Inside the air museum, the showpiece of the exhibit was the "Spruce Goose." It absolutely dwarfed everything else in the building! One docent pointed out that the wings are not supported beyond the fuselage and in 60 years they have only sagged 0.9 of an inch from when it was built. When it flew the first and only time, the wingtips raised up 11 feet from their rest position. That's a flexible and strong wing!
The Goose was powered by eight of these engines. Each had 28 cylinders and cranked out 3,000 hp. Apparently, the engine had issues which led to an extensive shut-down procedure that lasted 6 hours and a start-up procedure lasting 4 hours.
The Evergreen corporation all started with this little crop dusting guy.
We got to spend some time crawling around inside of the B-17 Flying Fortress. In addition to carrying a load of high explosive gravity bombs, there were thirteen 50 caliber machine guns located with a line of sight in every direction. The guy in the belly turret was generally limited to about 120 pounds. Sadly, the guy didn't have much of a life expectancy in this position.
The first thing we saw in the Space Museum was a display about the Martian landers, Opportunity and Spirit. We watched a National Geographic program chronicling the first five years of their operation on the red planet.
Not sure why a piece of the Berlin Wall was in the museum, but it was interesting anyway.
This guy spent his career working with communications satellites, but he studied the Titan launch procedures so he could answer questions for visitors.
I like to try to identify the motor parts - gimbals, actuators, sensors and control electronics.
Joani likes to get the unusual angle or close-up of any and all parts of the rocket motor.
I like the geometric properties of the rocket engine nozzle.
And then I like to play with them.
I always dreamed of having one of these cameras. It was the Cadillac of cameras and the fact that the astronauts used it didn't hurt either.
The building included an array of jet and rocket-powered craft including an F-15, an SR-71, an X-15 and a few Russian jets including the Mig-19 and Mig-21. There was a mock-up (I believe) of the Reaper. I did not realize how big it is. It was suspended from the ceiling but I could see its wingspan was probably twice that of an F-15. The reaper is the gray craft above the F-15.
We spent the whole day in the museums and we were worn out, but I suspect we would stop in again if we get back in the area.
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