Fun in Seattle (Part 3)

This is the last set of photos from our Seattle trip, I promise! (Here’s part 1 and part 2.) On our last full day, we all went out to breakfast and then spent the afternoon at the Museum of Flight. We went there on one of our other visits several years ago, but they’ve got a few new displays, including…

…a shuttle! Aw, my old buddy. This isn’t a flown shuttle (those are in DC, Florida and California), but it’s the next best thing — the Full Fuselage Trainer (FFT) that used to be in Building 9 at JSC and was used to train crews for shuttle flights. I’ve even been in the cockpit of this one once before, way back when I was a coop!

The museum build a cool platform in the payload bay of the mockup which was a nice touch. Being able to go in there really gives you a sense of scale.

In front of the shuttle, they also had this neat display showing an aerial view of JSC. I was trying to point out various buildings to my sister but something was off. I finally realized what the problem was — this photo is OLD. Like, seriously OLD. It doesn’t have my building on it, but I’ll accept that since mine was only built a few years ago. But this photo doesn’t even have Building 4 South or the newer side of the Mission Control Center — both of which have now been there for 20+ years. Time for the Museum of Flight to get a new photo, I think!

The space wing is also home to a Blue Origin test vehicle that my friend Jen helped develop. Back when they were working on it, they found a stray dog that she and her husband adopted…and now her dog Penske is totally immortalized in a museum display. I was so amused by this.

They also had a flown Soyuz! I assume this descent module is on loan from the Russians, since I don’t think they give them away for good. It’s one of the capsules that Charles Simonyi (who flew to the ISS twice as a tourist) returned in. Look at all those scorch marks from the heat of reentry. Wow.