I had a Close Encounter with a very cool mini

[vincegamer]

I was at the Smithsonian Institution\'s Air and Space Museum Udvar-Hazy Center this weekend.
It\'s a huge museum dedicated to all that is good about flight (and by that I mean it completely leaves out any negatives at all).
Anyway, they have there the space ship model from the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

It\'s very cool. It\'s made almost entirely out of model railroad pieces, but the builders threw in some jokes.
For instance:
There\'s the cemetery (look close at the center of the pic and you should be able to see a cross and some headstones - it\'s the best I could do with my compact digicam)

Then there are the airplanes ready to take off the edge:

And of course, someone parked a VW bus in the middle of the ship:

And last, but certainly not least, R2-D2 made a guest appearance (apparently this one you can actually see for a second in the movie):

According to the label there is also a mailbox and a submarine, but I couldn\'t find them. Wikipedia claims there\'s also a shark.

 

[Onis Lair]

You missed the tie fighter. In the first picture with the cross and tombstone there is a tie fighter hanging from under the upper ledge.

 

[vincegamer]

Great Catch!

If I ever go back to the UH, I\'m going to spend more time looking this thing over.

Here\'s a shot of the graveyard from the other side.
A bit to the right is what might be a shark fin.

Also, the tie fighter can be seen to be on the end of a crain type spire in the upper left corner.

And front and center is what appears to be a tiny picket fence.

 

[hakoMike]

Oh, very cool. It must have been a blast to think of things to hide in there.

 

[freakinacage]

very cool. i actually noticed that tie fighter but didn\'t recognise it for what it was. ooh that shape\'s familiar....

 

[GreenOne]

Lol, that\'s great!
Those guys must have had a lot of fun building that, and wondereing if people will notice their little jokes.

 

[Shawn R. L.]

Did it give a count of how many lights and how many feet/miles of fiber optics there were in it?

 

[vincegamer]

It did not.
In fact, my biggest criticism of the whole museum was the labeling.
There wasn\'t a whole lot of actual educational data (unless you want to know how fast various planes could go).

Oh, I have a Master\'s degree in Museum Studies so when I go to a museum I tend to be rather critical of the exhibits from a professional perspective.

 

[Shawn R. L.]

Originally posted by vincegamer


I have a Master\'s degree in Museum Studies

Interesting. Didnt know such a degree existed. I love museums. Would like to go to the Hermatage some day. Might have to settle for a good picture book of it.

 

[supervike]

Thats really cool Vince!

 

[Jericho]

The picture with the cemetary has Darth Vader\'s TIE Fighter in it lol

 

[tzor]

Originally posted by vincegamer
Oh, I have a Master\'s degree in Museum Studies so when I go to a museum I tend to be rather critical of the exhibits from a professional perspective.

Oh have I got a place for you. You\'ll laugh, you\'ll cry. Well mostly cry. It\'s the museum of technology in Bangalore India.



The metal tube thing on the right wasn\'t working at the time. Surprisingly it was a very touchy feely type of museum with a lot of exhibits that supported interaction, even if at a mechanical level. (You can tell this is a hit with the students and there is one group in the picture.)