Boeing Spacearium

Today we ventured to the Boeing Museum of Flight in south Seattle with Mad and Taylor. Actually it was more like Mad and Taylor took us 'cause they got us in for free with the 'guest pass' on their membership.
We’ve been before but saw many new things this time. I didn't get any pics of it but they had a cool mock up (complete with hammering and sawing sounds) of the original Boeing factory. Lots of old tyme power tools all driven by belts connected to an elaborate drivetrain of ceiling mounted rods, gears and pulleys. The wooden plane frames they had on display contained a lot of the same technology I'm familiar with from my experience on sailboats (spars and wires). I did get a picture of Anza's namesake (sort of) engine. I prefer to think that they just forgot the space between the second "A" and the "N". That the real name is ANZA NI.

This trip we had a little more time to linger in the space exhibit. Anza got a turn in the space shuttle simulator. The objective is to safely land the shuttle at Edwards Air Force Base. Anza crashed into the desert floor... twice... guess she's not ready to pilot the shuttle yet. Mad and Taylor had to leave early, so I took Anza and Mojave to the kids area for our last few minutes. Anza loves climbing around on the planes and Mojave loves to watch.

There are several planes outside on the lawns around the museum building. As we were walking to the car we detoured a bit to get a few pics of the kids in front of this old school TWA "Lindbergh Line" passenger plane. My friend Wayne recently put some pics of the Long Beach, CA Airport on his flickr page. For those unfamiliar with it... many might say it needs to be updated, but I love it. It only has 2 gates, which are little more than a door that opens to the tarmac. They roll a staircase out to the plane. And bagage claim is just a cement pad next to the parking lot where they unload the bagage cart. The "Lindberg Line" plane would fit right in.