The Golden Age of Aviation
WASHINGTON — The “river visual” approach into Washington National Airport is amazing. The airport itself sits along the Potomac, and to keep planes from flying over the monuments and the White House, pilots guide large jets down the river, getting lower and lower, while making sharp turns to follow the contours of the water. If you’re on the port side of the plane (and I was), at the very last minute before touchdown, the Washington Monument, Capitol, White House, Watergate, Kennedy Center, Lincoln Memorial and Jefferson Memorial all come into view. Then the pilot puts the engines into hard reverse to keep from driving off the runway.
The same day that I flew from Gainesville to Atlanta, then Atlanta to Washington–a trip totalling less than two and a half hours of air time–I also saw the first airplane that ever flew. And a in a room right next to it, the spacecraft that put the first astronauts on the Moon. I saw their spacesuits, too, and touched a piece of moon rock. I saw the Spirit of St. Louis and the Gemini capsule to took John Glenn into orbit. It defies belief.
Filed under: Musings, Transportation, Travel on November 2nd, 2008
Don’t forget, we also saw their urine bags, their fecal bags, their huge “survival” knives, and the taxidermy monkey immortally preserved in its space capsule.