Kennedy Space Center

Today I found out that I am the Captain's Sputnik!  As most know that Russian satellite started the Space Race. It's name means, “Traveling Companion”.

Visiting the Space Center is a bit overwhelming...so much to see & understand. Once parked and ticketed we walked over to the Rocket Garden.

The Apollo Saturn V Rocket was too big to fit into one photograph.

Notice the people below this huge rocket.  Standing it is 36 stories high and weighs 6 million pounds.  

This is one of the F-1 Rocket engines.  It is the most powerful liquid-fueled rocket engine ever made. Developed under the direction of Wernher Von Braun, the Saturn V rocket was the largest operational vehicle ever produced. It would take FIVE of these F-1 rockets to lift this vehicle off the launch pad.  It is 18.5 feet high and 12.2 ft wide!

We took the bus over to the Apollo Center on the other side of the complex...about a 35 min. ride. Here we are close to the Vertical Assembly Building (VAB) but Sunday was the last day anyone was allowed inside.

We are not sure but think they are getting ready to put together the new Orion Capsule that will, on its first test launch travel 3,600 miles into space at 20,000 MPH...a Delta IV rocket will be used for this test.  And what surprised me......they plan to use this new vehicle to explore deep space, Mars and other planets.  They expect to launched the first manned Orion by 2017!!

This is the launch pad seen here through the bus window  used for the Moon Saturn V rockets and also to launch the Space Shuttle.

Here you are looking at the graveled road way for the Crawler...the machine that takes the rockets/space shuttle/future Orion rockets to the launch pad...a trip of nearly 4 miles that takes many hours moving slow.

They are reconstructing the Crawler now to hold an additional 7 million pounds!  So this road is also getting upgrades: 7 feet deep concrete under the gravel, Alabama & Tennessee river gravel is used because of its low friction properties.

This is a picture of the crawler...you can see the double tracks.

The doors on the VAB open all the way up to allow the crawler to move out carrying its cargo (Rocket) to the launch pad. As it moves ever so slowly it gets 32 feet per gallon.

We went into a building that housed the actually controls for the launch used to send up the Saturn V rocket.

Then we got to see a simulated launch as the lights dimmed & we heard audio and saw films of a launch.

I was glad they did the vibrations along with the noise....turns out, except for an atom bomb, this is the loudest man-made noise ever produced!  No wonder when we lived in Daytona Beach that the early morning Apollo launches would wake us up!  I have always wondered if those Saturn rockets changed the orbit of the earth slightly, too?!

In the Apollo Center they had a Saturn V rocket with its stages slightly separated for one to see.  Here is Walter (blue shirt) standing below those enormous engines.

We took the bus back to the area where the shuttle Atlantis has found a permanent home after 33 Missions into space!  It took three floors to house this space ship...much bigger than I expected!  AND there was no way to get the whole thing into one photo.

The cargo doors were opened and the manipulator arm extended.

Some kids and a few adults were having fun crawling through the partial model of the space station.  One man complained about his knees hurting...well, in space they would be floating through this small place.

One side of this building had all the simulators that the Astronauts train on so Walter tried the one that is used to practice connecting to the space station....hard!   It was easy to see why the men that do this train many long hours.  Here the Captain is doing something he is more familiar with ….landing but this time the “plane” is a little bigger!

Outside is a full scale model of the huge (orange) fuel tank and booster rockets that the shuttle is strapped to....one engineer said it was like, “pinning a butterfly to a bullet”!  So many precision things had to be developed to make any of this possible.

This is a picture of a model to show you how the “butterfly” fit onto this assembly.

An Amazing Day!  Loved what we saw and learned about space craft but I think I am ready for some slow moving on our water craft......