A day at Cape Kennedy

Today was an early start (pickup at 7:45)for a trip to Kennedy Space Center. This is Florida and is warm,,,, right ??? well not really this morning was just above freezing and we had to walk about 1/2 mile to the Bestwestern for pickup. The bus trip was on a Grayline bus and lasted about 2 hours. The bus was a VanHool and I discovered the cleaning staff in Victoria are the best. We got quite a nice tour going out and the driver went out of his way to make every one happy.

Once we got to the KSC (Kennedy Space Center) we started at the Hall of Fame. Very nicely done except the non American astronauts don't seem to exist. Interesting but it is the American Astronaut Hall of Fame, just something I noticed. We continued to the LC-39 Observation Gantry and we were able to see most of the area that NASA uses. 30,000 acres set aside for NASA, 24,000 is used as a wildlife sanctuary and only 6000 is used by NASA for its projects. They also have a very active sanctuary group working on the rest of the reserve to protect the local species.

The Grayline bus driver delivered us to the Kennedy Space Center and then the KSC operated buses took over. Between the driver provided info and the onboard video's, timed to correspond to what we were seeing out the windows, we were kept up to date on everything outside the bus. Buses run every 15 minutes and you can get off/on at any stop and carry on to the next at your convenience.

At the second stop on the tour we saw Alan Shepard's white, 1968 corvette, an Apollo spaceship with its Saturn Rockets, the Instrument Unit, Command Module, Landing Module and Support Module. The entire structure is as long as a football field, and is 90% fuel tanks. A separate room held 20 (or so) years of development of spacesuits. Everything from flexible, chain mail woven fabric suits with nylon bladders to full metal hard cased exteriors with inner fabric suits, and many many hybrids. Video's of the lunar landing and so much more.

At the final stop, there were many choices and not enough time. but right away we got into a line, really we did, although I dislike line ups, and got into the Space Shuttle Simulator. What fun. The video and noise and vibration do make you feel like you are close to the space experience. Sorry no cameras or pictures were allowed.

One of the two IMAX theatres was down for repairs, so off we went to the hubble telescope show. A combination documentary of the deployment, repair, and ongoing maintenance and a view of the star systems, galaxies and other space anomolies from hubble made this a highlight of the day.

Back outside, a visit to the rocket garden, nature and technology display and the starfleet academy, and we ran out of time. Looking at the size of the Redstone Rocket, which was enormous for the fifties, I think a lot of amateur rocketeers now have access to the materials to construct something almost this big today. Back to the bus for a 2 hour nap as we go back to our condo.