[Bymnbypeten]

I was very lucky to go there in about 2001 I think.*

Soooo much history and quality there it's hard to know where to start. I would have taken more photos but I only had one of the early-ish digital cameras back then and could only take a limited number of photos before the memory card was filled.

Here's a few I took anyway ...



Self explanatory, the hatch from the Apollo 11 Command Module.





Dave Scott, Commander of Apollo 15, has his lunar suit there. It's covered in lunar dust.








The mighty Rocketdyne F1 rocket engine, one of the five in the first stage. I reckon the open end of the bell was big enough for about three of me to stand up in. I'm not sure but I think the engine on display is one of the centre engines as some of the fluid lines had bellows, which would allow the engine to pivot around for thrust vectoring.
They also had a Moon rock embedded in a pedestal there, I touched it. So I'm lucky enough to have touched a piece of the Moon.



* We were supposed to do a charter from from Dulles, in Washington, back to Manchester for the UK Ministry of Defence. It was a one-way flight and the 747 was already over in the US so the entire 747 crew (3 flight crew and 15 cabin crew) were put on a British Midlands flight across the Atlantic the day before to start the flight the next day.
Woke up in the morning and was having breakfast, the Captain walked over with a big grin on his face.
I knew that grin.
"Whut?"
"Got some good news and got some bad news."
The good news was that the charter was still on, the bad news was that someone in the office had stuffed-up and the charter was on that day ..... next month. So they booked us another ticket (at substantial expense) back to Manchester later than day. The Captain was Canadian but knew the area a little and suggested that we pop over to have a look through the Smithsonian.
So I got a lovely company-paid trip from my base in Manchester to the Smithsonian and back.