Shuttle Discovery, Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center

Great pics! Always love seeing the Shuttles in person. Still surprises me every time how large they are.
 
Very nice! I chaperoned a school trip there recently. The kids stumped me by asking what the doors aft of the landing gear were for. "Hang on, let me text a friend at NASA..." Friend promptly responded that they were the connections to the external tank.
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B303CA9B-78B2-40E6-BCBA-3AF62C814C49.jpeg I was fortunate enough to take my family down to Florida to see its last launch, and then a couple years later, got to fly my boss to Dulles because he was an invited guest the day it was flown to Washington. I was standing right next to the CNN reporter when it flew by and then landed.
 
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GeorgeC said:
Very nice! I chaperoned a school trip there recently. The kids stumped me by asking what the doors aft of the landing gear were for. "Hang on, let me text a friend at NASA..." Friend promptly responded that they were the connections to the external tank.
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kayoh190 said:
Great pics! Always love seeing the Shuttles in person. Still surprises me every time how large they are.
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Thanks for the kind words and the stories. @Dave Theisen - cool image
 
Discovery at the beginning of STS-120:

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Nauga,
networked
 
Getting a type rating for that thing must be expensive.
 
I didn’t tell Mrs. Steingar it was there when we went. She just about broke down when she saw it. The thing has incredible presence, and it went to Space! A great museum with an awesome main attraction.
 
nauga said:
Discovery at the beginning of STS-120:

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Nauga,
networked
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Nice pictures.

steingar said:
I didn’t tell Mrs. Steingar it was there when we went. She just about broke down when she saw it. The thing has incredible presence, and it went to Space! A great museum with an awesome main attraction.
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Did she do work with the shuttles?
 
Here is a list of all the shuttle missions. I'm pretty sure it was STS-4 that I watched land at Edwards during a public invite on to the dry lake bed.

I was sitting in the Ft Hood reception building when the Challenger disaster happened. It was live on TV.
 
Yep, me and Discovery have a history. Back in 1984 I was attending a conference in LA and spent a few extra days and went up to Edwards to watch Discovery land. In an interesting coincidence, my wife has a small flag that had flown in space on that mission that the Smithsonian gave her when she retired. When the shuttle missions were winding down, Margy and I got VIP tickets to see the next to the last Discovery launch. We also knew one of the mission specialists that was on his way up to the ISS on that mission. The mission launched just before dawn (you could see the ISS transit just before the launch with the naked eye). Of course, we were at Udvar-Hazy when they switched out Enterprise for Discovery. Margy got the transporter crew to sign her picture of the mount point ("Attach orbiter here, note: black side down") that was hanging in her office.
 
steingar said:
A great museum with an awesome main attraction.
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Agreed. The SR-71 is a cool aircraft to see in person... or we’re you referring to a different main attraction?
 
flyingron said:
Of course, we were at Udvar-Hazy when they switched out Enterprise for Discovery.
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This is what I remember. Just after the Columbia accident, I recall the shuttle at Udvar-Hazy having wing damage from NASA testing done to determine wing strength. But the dates didn’t make sense, that was around 2003 and Discovery arrived much later. But the first “shuttle” on display was Enterprise.
 
Yep, it was parts of Enterprise that was taken. NASA retained rights to do things like that when it was donated. Enterprise is now on the Intrepid in NY. It suffered a little damage being barged over from JFK. Nobody liked my idea of just releasing it from the orbiter and flying it down to the deck. I actually had a copy of the manual of how to use two cranes to mount/demount the shuttle from the transporter when not done at Kennedy SFC or Edwards (which had specialized gantries built to do it).

Atlantis is at Kennedy. Endeavor went to the California Science Center (a bit controversial decision).
 
And here's a picture of Enterprise with the missing wing bit, looks like it was taken November 20, 2004 from my records:
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