Have a blast(off) at KSC

Kennedy Space Center & Cocoa Beach

Oct 20 2010

After snorkeling with the manatees, we drove to the east coast of Florida. On the map, it looked like a very easy drive.  Well, finding that main highway that heads across was not easy.  It had no number on the map.  After winding up on some other roads, we finally figured out that it's a Florida Turnpike with no numbers and got onto it.  It's also a toll road and it seemed we had to stop every couple of miles to pay another toll.  We are Californians, remember, and not used to toll roads.  Eventually we made it to Cocoa Beach, our home for two nights.  We had a 4th-floor room with balcony, right on the beach with a good view of a pier and lots of people watching.  After settling in, we had sundowners at the pier.

We had a very interesting and enjoyable day at the Kennedy Space Center.  They have amazing exhibits and two great 3D IMAX movies, one on the building of the space station (starting with the first section and then adding more and more with further missions) and one on the Hubbell space telescope. NASA has always had fantastic photography and to see the inside of the space station and Hubbell space walks on the huge IMAX screen (in 3D) was almost like being there. Yah, the astronauts float food and packages straight at us (the viewers) in 3D and we get several Point Of View trips floating through the station modules. Each film lasted 45 minutes, so is perfect for the space junkie.

Outside, there is a rocket garden planted with various rockets used during the space program. So you can see a tiny Mercury rocket assembly next to a Gemini, next to an Apollo. There was a small Apollo command module. Small? They put 3 astronauts on tiny lounge chairs with pretty much nowhere to go and sent them on a trip for several days.

Inside is a full Saturn 5 on its side that you can walk alongside. Massive.

We then took a bus tour past the Vehicle Assembly Building (tall enough to enclose a Saturn V and the Space Shuttle), with the famous shuttle transporter "crawler" tracks and a crawler itself that inches the entire (very tall and very heavy) rocket assembly miles from the VAB to the launch pad. The shuttle is “assembled” inside the VAB, brought in horizontally and then lifted vertically by an astounding crane assembly that can not only lift the beast, but can position it vertically and horizontally within one quarter of an inch while it's dangling! The shuttle is then affixed to the 2 solid rocket boosters and liquid fuel tank (the orange thing). The orange liquid fuel tank is made of aluminum and I recall hearing its not a lot thicker than a soda can, but once filled with fuel is rigid.

The space center is gearing up for the launch of Discovery on November 1st, and they roll the shuttle to the pad 30 days before the launch; this meant we were able to see part of the shuttle with its scaffolding in preparation for the launch.

After the tour we looked at and walked inside a horizontal shuttle and rocket package that’s back on the main grounds. The payload bay is very large; the crew compartment is big enough for the crew to at least not bump into each other (when weighless, they can use all of the walls. Funny to see video of astronauts in sleeping bags on “ceilings” and side walls. Up is truly down and like that…


They have rebuilt a full Mission Control center with the actual consoles from the era (cleverly, I assume, replacing some CRTs with more modern displays, but still showing the original video), and there is a presentation showing both Apollo 8 and 11 landings, with video (what we saw on TV as well as footage the astronauts took). Essentially we get to see the last minute or so of the Lunar module landing. Armstrong (Neil) had to disable the computer because it was trying to land the LM onto rocks. He had to slide sideways and find an open spot, and had some 30 seconds of fuel left as he did so. After this presentation, they drop a full sized LM in onto a lunar surface while it’s dark and then superimpose the Earth over it. Astronauts saw an Earth that was a bit larger than a full moon we see, but not much. So we got an idea of what they saw. Wow.

We did the shuttle launch experience, which supposedly mimics liftoff, which was fun.