Kennedy Space Centre

Damian at Launch Pad

This photo is from the NASA upclose tour. They took us around passed the launch pads. Candi took this shot, but got her timing wrong because I wasn't ready for the photo. We were on the seaward side of the pads here.

Damian in the Rocket Garden

This photo is taken at the rocket garden at the KSC visitors centre. The rocket garden as you can see has numerous rockets dating back from the beginning of the space race. The mercury and gemini program rockets are visible. The Mercuty rocket is on the left and the Gemini rocket is the big silver one right behind. Actually these rockets are a lot smaller than I expected. You can just see one of the mercury capsules lying sideways on the right. Its about the size of the Jabiru aircraft without wings and tail of course. If you consider that they put a man in that tiny capsule and then blasted him into orbit at 17500mph (27000km/h) and it had no wings or control surfaces that pilots are accustomed to, a very crude set of intruments and computer control, I'd say it was pretty scary stuff.

Crawler

On our way to the launch pads we drove along the crawler way - the track from the Vehicle assembly building to the pads. It just so happened to be that they were returning the crawler to the main complex from one of the pads at the time we drove down the road, so we got an upclose view of the crawler and Mobile launch pad.

Vehicle Assembly Building

Here is a photo of the vehicle assembly building. They built this building to assembly Saturn V (five) rockets for the moon trips, they continue to use the building to assemble the space shuttle components.

Saturn V launch control

We went to the Apollo/Saturn V centre. This is the re-assembled launch control room. These are the actually consoles used to launch the Saturn V, they are not mock-ups. They do a simulated launch in this room from about T-2 minutes through to blast off and Main engine Cut-off. The consoles come to life, you see images of the launch on all the screens, the room and windows shake and there is a loud roar of the rocket launching, you see a glow coming thorugh the sky facing windows. It is VERY IMPRESSIVE.

Real Saturn V

After the launch control centre we went into the main Saturn V building. Here they have a real Saturn V lying down in segments. It is huge, impressive, mind blowing. The Saturn V is about twice the size of the shuttle stack. The building is a tribute to the Apollo/Saturn 5 program.

Boosters and ET

Back at the visitors centre, here are real shuttle boosters and external tank. However there is only a mockup of the shuttle. They do not have any real shuttles (orbiters) on display. There are only 3 orbiters - Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour. They keep them under lock and key.

written by  Candi&Damian on August 21, 2007 from Orlando, United States
from the travel blog: Candy and Damian USA Aug/Sept 2007
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