Saturday, May 9
The miles of walking around the golf course had tired us out, so we slept in a bit on Saturday and didn’t hit the road until about 9:00 a.m. We had a 2-hour drive ahead of us, so we all settled into the car. I downloaded the photos off of Scotty’s camera to get a window into his thoughts as we drove.
Scott, ladies and gentlemen. The one and only.
We took the exit for our destination and headed east near the town of Titusville. It’s a remote stretch of road beyond the highway, which is important to note since our fuel light was now on, indicating we were on our last gallon of gas. Nevertheless, we pushed on. My notes say we reached our destination at 11:15 a.m.
The
Kennedy Space Center visitor complex first opened in 1967 and was an instant success, thanks to the Apollo program and high interest from the public in NASA (the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, for you non-Americans out there). By 1969 it was already hosting over 1 million visitors per year and has been a highly popular tourist attraction ever since.
We paid our parking fee and were directed to the lot closest to the main entrance, which gave us hope that even with our late start, we wouldn’t have to worry about crowds. Those hopes were dashed when we saw the lines at the ticket windows.
Ay caramba. Well, there wasn’t much we could do, so my parents jumped in line while I wandered the entrance plaza with Scotty. Off to the left, I could see several kiosks marked “Self-Service Ticketing”. Even better, there was hardly anyone there! Hoping we could beat the lines (and the system), we hurried on over to find…not a single screen was working. They were all as dead as Julius Caesar. So much for that idea.
Meanwhile, the line simply crawled along. Upon closer look, neither booth had all of the windows open. And my parents waited.
And waited.
Scotty and I wandered.
And wandered.
We even went into the gift shop, conveniently located outside the gates in case there was that one souvenir you just had to have.
We wandered back. My parents were still far back in line. At some point, I asked if my dad could pull up the website on his phone, order tickets, and get them at the Will Call window which had a much shorter line. He actually tried it, but the website wasn’t working properly.
There was a food truck by the gate that served hot dogs and “flatbreads” (Come on. Everybody knows they’re pizzas). It was getting closer to 12:00, so I offered to go get lunch as my parents continued to wait. Scotty and I took everyone’s orders and then grabbed the food. He had his third pizza of the trip.
Finally, at about 12:10, my parents bought the tickets for admission. As it turned out, all of the KSC’s computers were down, so they had to take everyone’s credit cards by hand individually. So we could put a man on the moon using a computer no more powerful than my pocket calculator, but could not successfully read a credit card.
In any case, we’d finished our lunch and were able to enter.
Having seen the line at the ticket booth, we were worried about crowds, but it turned out that it wasn’t an issue. Those were the worst lines we’d see all day. We headed straight for the entrance to the bus tour.
The meat-and-potatoes portion of any visit to the Kennedy Space Center is the bus tour of the property. It takes a couple of hours and gives visitors a glimpse at the various parts of the property, including the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB), launch pads, crawlers and observation posts, as well as a stop at the Saturn V building and exhibit.
Within a few minutes, we were on our way. The driver narrated the trip as we went along, and soon we were passing the VAB.
This is the building where the rockets and space shuttles are assembled together in proper position before being transferred to the launch pad. It’s one of the largest buildings in North America, although the lack of scale makes it hard to understand its sheer size just by looking at it. So, some facts and figures from our bus driver to help you out:
The stars on the flag painted on the side of the building are each 6 feet wide.
You could use the stripes as a travel lane for the tour bus we were riding.
Old Yankee Stadium would fit on the roof of this building.
The dark gray doors on the side are some of the largest doors in the world. It would be possible to slide the Statue of Liberty through them easily, without scraping any of the sides.
In this photo, you can see the control center, housed in the building in front of the VAB. This is where the launch control is headquartered. The windows give them a direct view of the launch pads.
We drove by the crawler, which is the massive transport vehicle used to move rockets, shuttles, etc. from the VAB to the launch pad. It drives on a huge road made of smooth Tennessee River Rock which is brought in, of course, from Alabama. When loaded down with cargo, the crawler makes its way to the pad at 1 mile per hour. Once it has offloaded the ship to the pad, it can speed back to the VAB at a top speed of 2 mph. I forget how many miles per gallon of gasoline it got, but it was even worse than a Humvee. The blocky pad marked “2” on top is part of the portable launch pad for the new SLS rocket they’re developing for a Mars mission in the future.
Here is one of the launch pads. This was used for space shuttle missions, and the scaffolding is part of the housing that was used to support the shuttle on the pad. Last time I was here, my son David and I saw the shuttle Endeavour on the pad enclosed in this housing.
The curved fence is there to keep both man and animal away from the pad. They had to curve it when they saw alligators actually climbing the fence to get over.
The driver stopped to allow us to get this shot with the VAB, launch pad, and rocket fuel tank. The water tank holds about 500,000 gallons of water which is all dumped on the pad during a launch. This is not to contain the heat, as you might expect, but rather to help dampen the sound of the launch.
It’s hard to contain the heat. Here are some concrete blast shields that have melted under a shuttle launch.
The final stop on the bus tour is the Saturn V building, a museum dedicated to the Apollo missions of the 1960’s and 70’s. You actually disembark the bus here in order to go see the exhibits. The first is a large room containing the actual mission control center computers from Houston that ran the Apollo missions. It’s now part of an elaborate presentation that takes you through the launch sequence of Apollo 8 in real time.
And it’s pretty cool.
From there, you are led into the main hall, where an actual Saturn V rocket awaits your discovery. This is the rocket used to launch each Apollo mission, and it’s the largest rocket NASA ever built. Words cannot describe the scale of this monster.
But I can use Scotty to demonstrate the scale.
Here’s a moon landing craft. No matter how many times I see it, it always amazes me that we landed on the moon with something that looks like an Erector set wrapped in tin foil.
The other main exhibit housed in this building is a show dedicated to the Apollo 11 mission, first to land on the moon. It’s another entertaining show, one that makes me proud of my country.
We checked out the Apollo exhibits which included this capsule, nicely toasted after a re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere.
Hard to believe that’s all that is left after leaving the earth on the massive rocket in the other room. Makes you wonder how the astronauts felt. But then again, as Rockhound states in the movie Armageddon:
“You know we're sitting on four million pounds of fuel, one nuclear weapon and a thing that has 270,000 moving parts built by the lowest bidder. Makes you feel good, doesn't it?”
Of course, the Apollo astronauts didn’t have a nuclear weapon, but with all that rocket fuel underneath them, would it have mattered?
There’s one spot where you are allowed to touch an actual moon rock.
Turn away now if you don’t want me to reveal that it actually feels like…
…
…
…
…a rock.
We finally exited the Saturn V building and returned back to the main complex on another bus. As I mentioned earlier, this bus tour really is the heart and soul of a visit here. I find NASA endlessly fascinating, and both the drivers and exhibits are full of information that is a nerd’s (and engineer’s) delight. There was a series of short videos during the bus ride detailing the hopes for the Mars mission, but as we all know, those kinds of things are always subject to funding and political winds. The folks there seem a little perturbed when funding is discussed. They like to point out that NASA is the only part of the government that actually turns a profit, due to the patents and scientific advances they’ve created.
I enjoy seeing what NASA has accomplished and imagining what it must have been like to have been a part of those groundbreaking achievements. It’s hard to look at what has been accomplished and not wonder to yourself—why don’t we still try to do things like that?
Coming Up Next: The “other” main attraction. And I try to go as far onto Disney property as I’m allowed.
I don't think my wallet can handle this.
That is crazy!
