Hacker News Reader

Comment by nataz | Hacker News Reader

The more famous Smithsonian Air and Space museum is in D.C. right on the national mall, maybe 10 min from national airport (technicality in virginia, but right next to DC).

You visited the udvar-hazy center which is out by Dulles airport in Chantilly. It is still part of the smithsonian, but more focused on displaying lots of different aircraft in a few large hangers. Very impressive and worth a visit, but not the main air and space facility.

Either you had a legitimate miscommunication, or you got scammed by your driver. No one from around the DC metro would confuse the two.

View on HN

Last time I was in DC, they had recently installed one of the space shuttles into the Dulles-area Smithsonian hanger. I was in "DC Central" and made a point to bus out to the off-site hanger for the space shuttle (and everything else there).

Although I did my paranoid pre-trip research [partial thanks to dad], I can understand the confusion.

Two of my favorite photos from Udvar-Hazy of the Shuttle Enterprise from a trip there many years ago. They had recently restored and placed it on display (this was around ~2003), prior to moving it to NYC years later. Shuttle Discovery is in its place now.

https://i.imgur.com/rvgjnn9.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/DrItbeK.jpg

If you are only going to visit one location, or if you have young kids, or you want to hit up the other smithsonian museum's the Air and Space museum on the mall takes priority.

That said, I've been to the Air and Space museum a handful of times, and I only go back when I have visitors in town who want to do the tourist thing.

The udvar-hazy faculty is something I'll visit on my own over and over again. It's an incredible collection of important machines including the discovery space shuttle, an SR71 blackbird, the Enola Gay, etc.

The museum in DC hits all the famous stuff, Wright Flyer, Bell X1, etc.

The museum at Dulles features a lot of much larger aircraft and a lot of the more niche technical displays that they can't justify the space for in DC.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com