New York’s hidden museum secret: the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum

It’s not often you call a full-size, genuine retired US Navy aircraft carrier anything other than big, obvious and in-your-face, but the USS Intrepid, now permanently moored in New York, is home to a great museum which didn’t feature in the lists of top New York tips I perused before visiting* the city of potholes**.

Perhaps blame me for looking at the wrong lists, but just in case you’re headed that way too and look at similar lists, here’s my tip: go visit.

It’s not just the aircraft carrier itself you can see. It’s also home to one of the surviving Concordes (big tour dilemma: do you sit in Mick Jagger or the The Queen’s favourite seat?) and to the space shuttle Enterprise. It’s the only space shuttle not to have featured a toilet, not due to revenge by a sacked constipated NASA employee, but because it was the original prototype model and plans to turn it into a completed version ready to go into space were never implemented.

Next to it for size comparison is a teeny, tiny Soyuz model. It’s minuscule by comparison, though for me the most striking comparison was one none of the super-keen guides or great signs mentioned.

Compare the control panels for a Shuttle (the photo below shows one vertical and part of a prototype one at an angle), a Soyuz and the Concorde:

Amazing to see that the Concorde had the most complicated controls by far, especially if you factor in the control panel just to the right:

Rather worrying to see one piece of advice that Concorde pilots had to be given:

By the way, the High Line, which was regularly tipped in my pre-trip reading, is a good as the tips suggest by the way. Go walk it.

* Handy tip for visiting the US: don’t wear exactly the same clothing as you wore when your passport photo was taken. It just might trigger some questions.

** Although Manhattan roads are riddled with potholes, oddly the pavements by contrast are nearly pristine with even close inspection revealing very few signs of them having been dug up. I guess New York’s utility cables, pipes and the like don’t run under the pavements, though they must surely be accessible somewhere.