AIRPLANES!!!!!!

Today I finally went to the Intrepid museum. The intrepid is an aircraft carrier that served during the Vietnam War. Now it is a Navy museum. The upper deck of the carrier is filled with awesome aircraft (Mig's, F16, Harrier, ...). But the most awesome one is of course the SR-71 Blackbird, the most beautiful aircraft ever built in my opinion. I have never seen one before until now, so it was amazing. Furthermore, you can also visit the Space Shuttle Enterprise. This shuttle never went into space, but was only used to test the landing of the Shuttle. Nonetheless, it was also nice to see it. From the 4 remaining Shuttles, I have now already seen two of them and by Christmas I should have seen all of them :) . 

Inside the carrier, there are exhibitions about the life aboard such a huge ship, some more aircraft and stuff about the Vietnam War. Next to the Intrepid, I also visited the USS Growler, a submarine used in the Cold War. It was about 45 minutes of waiting before I could enter the submarine, but it was totally worth it. You can see how it was to live and work on that ship, and you really respect the guys who did that when you walk through the Growler. It feels a bit claustrophobic after a while, it is all very small, no way to catch some fresh air,... I was happy when I was outside again after 15 minutes. So it must have been horrible to stay in there for 72 days (longest trip done by the USS Growler). 

If this wasn't enough, there was also a nice event today: The space days. A lot of people from NASA were there to talk about current and future projects. Most of them were a sort of ambassadors for NASA, but I also talked to some aerospace engineers, which was very nice of course. I learned a lot and came back to Staten Island with a bag filled with awesome free NASA stuff, ranging from brochures, to stickers and nice posters. I just hope that stuff gets safely back to Delft in December ;).