The last time I visited the Udvar-Hazy facility, it was the home of the Enterprise – the first of the Space Shuttles and the one that was used only for atmospheric testing but, despite original plans, never went to space. When the shuttle programme ended, the orbiters were distributed to museum locations and Discovery was allocated to NASM replacing Enterprise. Therefore, this time I went, it was a first time to see Discovery.
Of course, everyone visiting is interested in a shuttle so there were always people around the orbiter. I just had to embrace that and get whatever shots I could make work. There are some detail shots that I took which I will deal with separately. They have more of an abstract feel to them. Here I shall just focus on the wider view of the orbiter.
As something that was designed to travel at such high Mach numbers, it is actually quite a blunt airframe. The nose has a chunky look to it and the leading edges are very thick. The lines of the wings are interesting and the underside is simple. However, the way it is displayed has the undercarriage extended and the ports that fed fuel from the external tank into the three main engines are opened up.
There is a balcony that overlooks the space hall where Discovery sits. This allows you to get a more level view and one from a distance that takes everything in while not being blocked by people or exhibits in front. I did also take some panoramas from down on the ground level. Being that close to the airframe that big makes for a quite distorted view. I find that rather interesting.
I have now seen three of the flying shuttles. Discovery on this visit, Endeavour as it was being completed in the museum in Los Angeles and Atlantis when it flew to space. Columbia and Challenger are gone, of course. Enterprise completes the set.
The glossy paint finishes on airliners tend to make the fuselages look uniform to the naked eye – particularly when at a distance. Of course, when you get closer – particularly on an aluminium fuselage – you can see the joints and reinforcements that go into the detailed design. A British Airways A380 was on one of the gates at Heathrow early one morning as we taxied by. I assume it had been there for a while because there was a lot of condensation on the skin from morning dew. This served to highlight the different parts of the structure including where the skin was thicker and were there was an overlap of skin layers. I thought it was interesting to see how it made a normally uniform fuselage look so much more complex.
