Air & Space Museum and National Archives

Out of self guilt I am getting around to putting up some updated reports. On my most recent trip back to DC I had some spare time one afternoon and so decided to go down to the Mall and see the proper air & space museum. You may recall my opinions of it's counterpart at Dulles, (link) which I criticized for having exceptionally poor lighting. Well, the proper National Air & Space Museum is much, much better. The lighting is fine; and though jumbled, the layout is more inviting. I ended up spending over 3 hours there just going slowly through all of the exhibits. I spent most of the time looking at the satellite and rocket sections, which were very informative (I even learned some things that weren't on the signs, I'm just that good). More and more as I study rockets I am impressed by the V2. It's the oldest of the real rockets as we know them today, but one would be hard pressed to find a component or technology that is much different from what it had.

The same weekend I had the chance to go to down to the National Archives. It's one of the museum I've never been to before, and it more and less exciting that I had expected. First, the hall where the Constitution and Declaration of Independence are on display is beautiful. The documents themselves, however, have not fared well through the ages, to the point of being nearly unreadable. The paper used in colonial america just wasn't as long lasting as more ancient european documents for reasons that are complicated and chemical. There were displays on the education of presidents and the magnitude of documents that are held by the archive. Both were very informative, but it would be more fun if you could actually search the archives to see where you show up!