2015-03 Kennedy Space Center

Ray visited the a place he has long wanted to see, Kennedy Space Center.  It was a fun day reliving growing up during the heyday of the space program, where the whole nation was behind the program and also obsessed with our progress.  From the first man in space, to extended orbits, launch pad tragedies to the watching men walk on the moon.  Ray and one of his co-workers spent most of the day at the space center.










The first stop was the Atlantis space shuttle building which has the actual retired Atlantis space shuttle, which had over 30 missions and traveled over 126 million miles.  Seeing the ships up close provides a perspective of their size and the power required to get them into orbit.  The rocket motors and engines have diameters of about 6' and burn fuel a the rate of tons per second.

Next was a bus ride through the entire complex, seeing the launch pads (which are being reconfigured for new and flexible space vehicles), media areas, and the gigantic vehicle assembly area, the largest one story building in the world, the equivalent of over 50 stories tall.  The crawlers that transported the completed rockets to the launch pad have their own roadway, which is river rock gravel and not paved or cement.

Next stop was the Apollo building, which has a full size Saturn V rocket, space capsule and lunar module.  They rockets are so big, but he command module and lunar lander or small and a tight fit for the astronauts.   This represents the part of the space program that I remember the best, including building models of the Apollo rockets, getting up before sunrise to watch moon walks, and marveling at the fact that these guys left our planet.

After the Apollo area, we spent time in the rocket garden, which has mock ups and actual rockets from the various stages of the space program, from the smaller satellite launching rockets to the Saturn 1B used for one of the Apollo launches. 










After leaving the Kennedy Space Center, we stopped at the Astronaut Hall of Fame just across the causeway.  There was much more focus on the individual astronauts and the command modules they piloted and the tight quarters they worked in.