Quick Review of Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center Air and Space Museum near IAD
Getting There: Parking is $15. 30 Minute Grace Period. After 4:00 PM its free.
Shuttle from IAD. Museum is good if you have a long stopover in IAD and need something to do.
Observation Tower - Can see IAD runways and hear ATC in real time. If you get there during a time where planes are flying right past aka. planes are landing at the the closest runaway it can be really cool otherwise you can definitely see the planes land but best to bring binoculars or a have a really good zoom lens on your camera for the full experience.
Exhibits - 2 main exhibit areas, Planes and Space.
The planes exhibition hall has the Concord and the Enola Gay ( used to bomb Japan in WWII). They also have a collection of other Aerobatic cool planes and military planes.
The Space exhibition hall has one main the feature, the Discovery Space Ship together will some other rockets and stuff like that.
Overall, I thought it was a cool place to go but kind of boring since you can't go in or even touch any of the planes. Really all your doing the whole time is looking and reading. The Observation Tower was really cool, too bad the planes were not going right past us, but maybe its worth it to take a quick trip there and go up to the tower and quickly see the some of the planes.