Technik Museum Sinsheim & Speyer – a journey through time & technology
Last year we were fortunate enough to visit Germany’s most popular technical museums – the Technik Museum Sinsheim & Speyer. Join us for a look back at these wonderful exhibitions.
These two museums are among the most renowned technical museums in Germany, boasting a diverse collection of exhibits and are favorite destinations for all lovers of technology, aviation, and space exploration.
As their names suggest, these museums are located in the western German cities of Speyer and Sinsheim.
The history of these museums begins in the 1980s, when collectors and restorers came up with the idea of making their exhibits accessible to a wider public. On May 6, 1981, the Automobile and Technology Museum in Sinsheim opened with a total area of 5,000 square meters. Since the museum in Sinsheim lacked space for expansion, 10 years later, the Association of Automobile and Technology Museums opened the second museum in Speyer, in 1991.
But what’s the connection between German technology museums and Kazakhstan? There are located some technologies which are connected with the Cosmodrome Baikonur and the city of Almaty. And these technologies were our main goal for our visit to the technical museums of Speyer and Sinsheim. Both museums present various types of technology in the broadest sense: vehicles from bicycles to airplanes, musical equipment, military equipment, and space technologies. One day is not enough to view the exhibits at the museums. Each museum requires a separate day for leisure and exploration. That’s what we did.
First, we visited the Technik Museum Speyer. The reason of our choice on Speyer was to see with our own eyes the full-scale aircraft analogue of the Buran spacecraft, the BTS-002 OK-GLI, which made around 25 flights and 19 landing approaches in automatic mode, and also to see the BOR-5 (in Russian: Беспилотный Орбитальный Ракетоплан 5 / The Unpiloted Orbital Rocketplane 5) experimental apparatus, an overall and weight model of the Buran orbital spacecraft in a scale of 1:8.
The history of the Buran spacecraft and similar space shuttles is well known to every space enthusiast and rocket scientist. Unfortunately, the fate of these spacecraft was not so favorable. In 2002, the only Buran to fly into space in 1988 (version 1.01) was destroyed when the roof of the assembly and test building at Baikonur collapsed. The Buran was stored on top of a completed prototype of the Energia launch vehicle. The destruction of both items was the loss of a historically significant human achievement in technology. Like the American Space Shuttle, Buran was also proof of human success in the space industry, although Buran went unfortunatly only one time to space. As you already know, the world’s largest aircraft, the An-225 Mriya, which was built especially for transportation of Buran, was destroyed in 2022. Therefore, it was very important and gratifying for us to see at least a intact & reconstructed model of the Buran in Speyer.
During the tour through the exhibits of the Technik Museum Speyer, we have seen many old classic cars. There were many kind of the cars from worldwide famous brands of different ages. One of these cars caught our attention, it was the one-off racing car Packard-Bentley Mavis which was built by amature car lover Chris Williams in 2010 by using the old classic cars’ spare parts. But the main engine of the Packard-Bentley Mavis was something special: It is a engine which was originally used in a US Navy patrol torpedo boat during World War II, and the car itself used 15 liter petrol per minute. That’s insane! And another highlight of the museum which is also important to mention was the IMAX Dome Cinema which is the only one in Germany. It was a really good experience to watch the documentary about planes which gave us such a realistic feeling like we were flying in the sky.
One thing that we really liked at Technik Museum Sinsheim & Speyer is, that it’s possible to enter many different types of exhibits such as planes and boats. We used it as an opportunity! At the Technik Museum Speyer we entered such planes as Boeing 747, Antonov AN-22, submarine U-9 and sea rescue cruiser John T. Essberger. Each exhibits of the museum were beautiful beyond compare. One museum had already gave us so many impressions, we were super excited about the next day in Sinsheim.
The city of Sinsheim is located about 40 kilometers from the city of Speyer. The main reason of our visit to the Technik Museum Sinsheim was the Soviet supersonic passenger airliner Tupolev Tu-144 and the Anglo-French supersonic airliner Concorde.
The Tu-144 is a Soviet supersonic passenger jet from the 1960s and 1970s, built by the Design Bureau of Soviet aircraft designer Alexei Tupolev, which also participated in the construction of Space Shuttle Buran. 50 years ago, history was made with the landing of a TU-144 in nowadays Almaty, Kazakhstan. It was the world’s 1st commercial supersonic flight. Both the TU-144 and Concorde aircraft stopped their operations, as was the Buran project. Therefore, as in the case of the aircraft analogue of Buran spacecraft, we were fortunate to see both Soviet and Anglo-French-made aircraft with our own eyes. We also had the opportunity to visit the inside of these historic aircraft, and we could easily compare both supersonic passenger jets as they are located next to each other.
We can say that the Technik Museum Sinsheim is a good place for motorsport fans. There are a various kinds of racing cars and motorbikes. One of the highlights of the sport car was the replica of Ferrari F2004 of Michael Schumacher who was the famous German Formula 1 racing driver, seven-time world champion. Another highlight was the the DMC DeLorean is a rear-engine two-passenger sports car which same model of the car was used for the famous movie trilogy Back To The Future. But there were not only racing cars, there were also heavy vehicle transports like steam locomotives, tractors, war technologies, and various kinds of planes and helicopters.
The trip to Technik Museum Sinsheim & Speyer was an unforgettable journey. Even if we didn’t have a time machine like in the Back To The Future, we could travel through the time by watching and learning about the exhibits of these museums. We can say that we learned a lot, and it was a pleasure to see these historical important technology achievements of mankind.
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