I’m going to start this post off by saying that I’m a bit of a space geek and I’ve always wanted to be an astronaut/satellite repair technician, possibly in conjunction with my Jewish space laser repair business. I’m still waiting for that to get some traction, but I digress…
After a really awful breakfast at our hotel, we headed out to the KSC. I was totally excited for this day and it’s all I talked about for the last few weeks. It was a Thursday morning, so it wasn’t very crowded and I was like a kid in a candy store.
The first stop was the “rocket garden” which had the actual rockets from the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs.
We took the bus over the to Apollo/Saturn V building, where you can see the actual launch pads off in the distance. Heading into the building you’re staring down the 5 bells of the Saturn V that is laying horizontally in sections along the entire length of the building. It was freaking awesome to behold.
We wandered into one of the movies, and you can see the actual control room for the Apollo 8 mission:
Heading back to the main part of KSC, we wandered around the building that had all the deep space exploration tech on display.
Then we walked over to the Atlantis building, which is all about the space shuttle. We watched a movie about how NASA decided to build a reusable rocket, and how they figured out all the engineering issues. They shuttled us into the next movie room which is all about the space shuttle missions, and as it ends, the announcer says ‘welcome home Atlantis’ and the curtain at the front opens and you’re face to face with the actual Atlantis shuttle. It was really, really well done – probably the best moment we had.
The space shuttle itself was quite the sight, burn marks from the solid rocket boosters, worn heat shield tiles, etc. It was totally cool:
We wandered around a bit more before heading over to the gift shop. We really had to buy NASA sweatshirts… too cool.
Seeing all the actual rockets, engines, and space capsules was really something. Those early astronauts have to be some of the bravest people to have ever lived, and the amazing amount of design, engineering, and invention that propelled these vehicles is just staggering.
When I grow up, I want to be an astronaut.