Crossing the bridge over the Indian River near Titusville, Florida, we made our way to the Kennedy Space Center.
I was taking pictures before we even parked, and I was so glad that I did when we returned to find our car at the end of our day. Yes, we forgot to make note of our parking location in our minds by looking for markers when we left the car!! Guess we won't do that again!!
Thank goodness we had this picture to look at to make sure we were headed in the correct direction!!
There were so many things to take pictures of that we will just show you a small selection of them. It was all very interesting but some things are now restricted from view since 911. But it did not diminish the magnitude or importance of it all!!
We boarded the bus along with the others in the herd. That is what it seemed like as they channeled us down the many chained off walkways. But we were glad to have the bus transportation and narration as we traveled over the 140,000 acres of NASA's home. We met people from Belgium, Germany, Japan and Canada was we stood in line, all very interesting.
We spent the day viewing many wonders of the American space program at the Visitor Complex. First we viewed an eight minute filmed Shuttle Launch Experience by Astronaut Charlie Boulden before we boarded buses again to tour the grounds around
these three buildings, each one housing a shuttle, and visit the Apollo/Saturn V Center. The three remaining shuttles are the Discover, the Endeavor and the Atlantis. This Visitor's Complex was the closest that we could get to the Launch Pad as the Discover was already on the Pad for the Launch to take place on April 5th. There are still to be three more launches, once for each, before the scheduled shutdown of Kennedy.
Most of these photos were taken from the lookout at the Visitor's Complex
or from the bus as we drove by.
This is the Assembly Building where the Shuttle spends it's last month of preparation before it is rolled out to the Launch Pad. To give us some comparison of the size of the building, the guide told us that each star on the US flag is six feet across from tip to tip, that our bus could drive down any one of the stripes with room to spare and the overall size was 110 feet by 209 feet. There are three hundred top of the line engineers working in this building, with a total of sixteen hundred employees over the entire Kennedy Center.
Then it travels down this roadway made special just for moving the shuttle and booster.
The tour guide did tell us how slow it travels over this road, but I can't remember!! I guess I should take notes. The roadway is made of three inches of limestone on top of eight inches of river rock. I do remember that!!
Now go with us as we looked over all of the personal astronaut memorabilia
and the replicas around the grounds
and in the museum
We looked at this mock work station before they showed us films of some of the first launches into space. We also watched a film in the IMAX Theatre of the preparation of astronauts and their launch. Very realistic!!
There is also a Astronaut Hall of Fame back on the main land, but we did not go into that as it was getting late in the day when we finished at the Space Center and we were ready for dinner! So we went back to Sanford and found Logan's Steakhouse. That hit the spot!
Now I take you to the lot in front of our Campground at 6:21 a.m. on April 5th where we photographed what we could see of Discover's launch about 90 miles away. They said that it would begin travel following along the east coast of the United States.
On the bus tour the Guide told us about this ground also being a natural wildlife preserve. And he pointed out this bald eagle's nest that measures eight feet across and weighs forty pounds. It has been used by the same eagles as they return each year. Their off spring have also built nests in this area that are used repeatedly year after year.
We also saw alligators and a wild pig!
Take care now and check in with us again soon.
No comments:
Post a Comment