Wright Place Right Time

This week we went to the National Air and Space Museum.  Elaine and the kids went earlier without me and I finished up the work day and then joined them.  I had forgotten how much there is to see there.  They were a couple hours ahead of me and only saw a small portion of the museum.

After I arrived we were able to see two parts:  "How Things Fly" and "The Wright Brothers".  I enjoyed "How Things Fly" a lot because every display was "hands on" and taught some principle associated with how things fly.  It was fun to see the kids try to figure out the "how" and "why" of each display.  The mechanical engineer in me absolutely loved it and I think the kids had fun too.

I was so happy to discover that the museum had a Wright Brothers display.  Immediately I hoped it would make up for our disappointing trip to Kittyhawk two weeks ago where we arrived at the park 15 minutes before closing and didn't get the full experience.  The display at the museum didn't let me down.  It was really well done with good information and some hands on displays as well.

One of the Wright Brothers displays that was interesting to me described Orville Wright as easily doing well in school, inquisitive, super smart, quiet, and having a creative/artistic side.  When I read that I immediately felt like it was describing my son Sam.  When I pointed it out to him he seemed to like the comparison.

The rest of the display was great too.  There were hands-on models of wings and gliders/planes constructed like the Wright Brothers', real pieces from the Wright Brothers' original gliders/planes, the actual structure of one of the original planes with new fabric on the wings, and realistic animated videos re-creating those historic first flights.  The models of the different airplane parts (wings, structures, components, etc) showed how the Wright Brothers worked around weaknesses in their designs and solved problems.  I really liked how they described the Wright Brothers' success as the result of an iterative, incremental, experiment-improve cyclic process.  They would make a design, fly it like a kite, refine the design, fly it as a kite again, and then ultimately if it was good enough try it themselves.  I think a lot of progress in life is iterative and incremental.

Here is a neat quote from Orville that I liked:  “Isn’t it astonishing that all these secrets have been preserved for so long so that we can discover them?”  Included in those secrets were the three things that they discovered about an aircraft as it flies:  pitch, yaw, and roll.  These three things together describe an aircraft's position in the air as it flies and controlling them is still the basis for controlled flight.

The Wright Brothers display definitely made up for the disappointment of our visit to Kittyhawk.  I'm glad we went and would recommend the museum to anyone who visits Washington DC.