Vacation Day 4 - Kennedy Space Center

Getting up this morning was hard (still not quite over that jet lag). We grabbed a quick breakfast and drove over to Cape Canaveral (everyone slept except me). I'm not sure if it was because it was Thursday or if it was the heat, but it was not very crowded there that day.



We started the day with a brief play at the play structure because we had 10 minutes to kill before the Rocket Garden Tour. This was billed as a 15 minute tour explaining what all the various rockets in the Rocket Garden are. However we had the know-it-all docent who launched into a 40 minute, in-gruesome-detail description of the entire lunar program, complete with mild snide comments about what NASA's done since. I have to say he was a relatively engaging speaker, and he was certainly knowledgeable, but still, we had places to go. Amazingly, the Things stayed still for the whole thing.



After that, we took a break from the heat by going into the Early Space Program building. Inside were great displays including a mock Soyuz capsule, a lunar rover you could sit on, those tiny, tiny capsules they sent the astronauts up in, and the actual original Mercury mission control equipment.



We then walked around the Rocket Garden, sat in various modules, walked a gantry, and generally marveled at how short some of the rockets were that put men in orbit.

Next up was the shuttle Explorer. I'm not sure if this was once a test model, but they had it set up so you could see the size of the cargo bay and the crew space and flight deck. Next to this was the Shuttle Experience. This was a simulated shuttle launch. They have all sorts of warnings that old, sickly people shouldn't go on this because of the realistic shaking and noise, which scared off Calvin. He and Mom decided to watch the whole thing from the 'Observation Lounge'. G&G Hobbes and I entered the 'capsule' and we were off. Let me just say, unless you're incredibly frail or prone to motion sickness, this thing is pretty much a cake walk. It was a lot of fun. The best part was that doing this was included in the price of admission (as were both IMAX movies). AND the quarter you spend to put your stuff in a locker while you're in the ride is refunded. I love our government!



After a brief picnic lunch, we took the bus tour. The first stop was Observation Gantry LC 39. This is a tower that gives you a good view of the VAB (vehicle assembly building) and the two shuttle launch pads (A and B). As we drove there, we could see crews putting fresh gravel down in the track that the Launch Vehicle Crawler follows to take the shuttle from the VAB to the launch pads. One of them has been refurbished to be ready for the next generation Ares rockets. You can't go into the VAB anymore. When my family visited here in 1976 (when the space program was between Skylab and the shuttle) you could go in and see the biggest one-story building in the world, but now, since they store the SRB (solid rocket boosters) in there, no more tourists. The Things were not very impressed with this stop, as it was mostly looking a buildings and launch platforms sans rocket ships. Back on the bus to the next stop, the Apollo/Saturn V center.



You enter a large room and see a video describing the Apollo missions - very exciting stuff, from the tragedy of the Apollo I fire to the build-up to Apollo XI. Then the doors open and you enter Mission Control circa 1969, and You Are There as Neil, Buzz and Mike were launched into space. From there you enter a hangar containing mock-up of a Saturn V rocket. It's huge: 363 feet from stem to stern, weighing 6.7 million pounds. Wow. In addition to the Big Rocket, there was a chip of a moon rock there, which you could touch (much like the one in the Air & Space Museum in DC). So now we have touched two a moon rocks. Back on the bus to the last stop the International Space Station Center.

Here there was a movie that talked about NASA's current mission, the ISS. The best part of this was seeing the clean room where workers were preparing the payload for the next shuttle flight. There were also mock-ups of some of the modules, but at that point, we were a little burnt out, so we didn't take too long looking around.



We returned to the main visitor center complex and, after a brief snack, saw a 3D IMAX movie entitled "Magnificent Desolation". This attempted to give the viewer the experience of being on the moon. There were computer reconstructions of scenes of walking on the moon, interviews with some of the 12 men who have walked on the moon, and plenty of archival footage. Tom Hanks and some other recognizable voices from Apollo 13 (the movie) narrated. It was very well done and we liked it a lot.

All in all, a very successful visit. The Things really liked it, and I felt a bit like a Thing myself, seeing all that cool stuff that echoed throughout my childhood, even though I was too young when it was all occurring. That evening, we watched Apollo 13, so the Things would understand what an incredible event that was, in so many ways. And now, I need to go start preparing to become an astronaut.