Kennedy Space Center
November 22
The Kennedy Space Center deserves a post of its own. We were up and out early, dinghyed into the Titusville Marina and in an Uber by a few minutes after 9. It was a gorgeous day and my husband was so excited to visit the Kennedy Space Center.
When you first enter there is a display they call “The Rocket Garden” it has some of the actual rockets, Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Saturn V. Eddie got all choked up and proud seeing the rockets that he saw, as a kid, watching their launches on TV.
When you first enter there is a display they call “The Rocket Garden” it has some of the actual rockets, Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Saturn V. Eddie got all choked up and proud seeing the rockets that he saw, as a kid, watching their launches on TV.
The first stop there is a bus tour of the complex where you see launch pads, the ginormous buildings where the rockets are built and private industry project sites. It was very cool.
The SpaceX (owned by Elon Musk) building, super long but not so tall. Before SpaceX, the USA builds rockets standing up and then moves them by these very cool rocket movers to the launch pad. SpaceX builds their rockets laying down, then moves them to the Launch site and stands them up. Spacex is the first to land the rockets in the same place they took off from. They are currently working on a crewed rocket that can transport astronauts to the international space station and then return them safely home.
Rocket crawler - transporter. Moves super slow - no more than 1mph! The average trip time from the VAB (vehicle assembly building), where the rockets are built along the Crawlerway to Launch Complex 39 is about five hours.
The bus tour lasted about 45 minutes and was very cool but also difficult to get pictures. The VAB was ginormous. The VAB covers eight acres, is 525 feet tall and 518 feet wide. The VAB high bay doors are the largest in the world at 456 feet high and take about 45 minutes to completely open or close. The building is home to the largest American flag, a 209-foot-tall, 110-foot-wide star spangled banner painted on the side. It was built for Apollo 5 and it still used today for
The final assembly of rockets and space shuttles.
At the end of the bus tour we toured the Atlantis building which houses the space shuttle Atlantis!
Here we stood in awe of the space shuttle, and even rode n a simulator ride with all the kids!
My guy being a goofball, sitting in a simulation of the shuttle.
Exit through the gift shop..... and pretend you’re an astronaut!
The next few pics are from the Mars building. It’s hard to believe that NASA expects to put people on Mars in our lifetime.
Curiosity Rover - Built like a human! It is an insulated container that protects vital organs. It can chew the rock samples by grinding them into powder, then pours it through funnels on its back into its body. Once digested inside, the rover can tell what it just ate with science tools that can identify what the samples it just ate are made of!
All in all, we had a great day, learned a lot and laughed an awful lot!
Comments
Post a Comment