Pima Air and Space Museum

We ventured out to the Pima Air and Space Museum a few weekends ago. We took this biplane to get there. Lillian flew.


This is a hobby plane that you can order in a kit. After sitting in it and manipulating all the controls, it reminds me of the inside of mom's piano: held together with shoelaces. And, I'm not entirely sure I want to be up at any distance off the ground with nothing between me and certain death besides shoelaces. So, we won't be buying one of these.


Tyler's an aerospace engineer, so I've heard a few things about airplanes. Above is an engine from an SR-71, what Tyler always described as a "super-secret, super-fast spy plane." (Pictured below) I guess there are only a few in existence... six maybe? He was really excited, talking all about how fast they are, telling me they go mach whatever, explaining to me about how the engine works and how it's essentially a big supercharger. It's pretty interesting, but I'm not an aerospace engineer, so I wasn't really impressed...


... until I saw this plaque. I can't really comprehend how fast mach whatever is but 67 minutes, 54 seconds to cross the whole United States is really, really fast. I couldn't believe it. I called Tyler over so he could look at this and be impressed. He got that look on his face that I assume all husbands get when talking to their wives about things like this (and wives get when talking to their husbands when talking about other things, like when I had to explain to Tyler that if the baby looks like she's going to poop in the tub, take her out and sit her on the toilet) and he says, "What do you think I've been talking about? How fast did you think mach whatever is?" (Wikipedia says they go mach 3, so that's probably what Tyler said.) At any rate... wow, mach 3 is fast.