Kennedy Space Center

2019 January 10

by Greg & Lyn

We played tourist for a day and visited the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canerval Florida. It was a fascinating day seeing the history of the space industry from the early unmanned rockets to the planned Orion mission to Mars.

One of the most interesting aspects of the tour is that many of the exhibits are actual spacecraft that were either moved here after being used, like the space shuttle Atlantis, or were next in line to be used, like the Saturn V rocket. Those two exhibits were probably the most awe-inspiring.

The Atlantis made 33 flights into space, including the last shuttle flight, a real workhorse! The immensity of the Saturn V was incredible. It took several minutes just to walk the entire length of it. Imagine the combination of massive size, enormous power, combined with attention to every minute detail.

Just to illustrate the vision of the folks involved in space travel: Apollo 11 landed on the moon in July 1969, culminating a 10 year effort. On April 1, 1969, BEFORE the moon landing, the chief engineer at NASA gathered the key engineers together and started the Space Shuttle program that took 12 years to complete.

Out greeter.

A model of the Mars Rover made out of LEGOs.

This is a scale model that took 90,000 LEGO pieces requiring 650 man hours to construct. It took 3 months for a master LEGO builder team.

This is the glider used by the chief NASA engineer to kick off the space shuttle program on April 1, 1969. He flew it down from a stairwell toward an assembled group of engineers to announce their new goal: a reusable space craft to shuttle equipment to and from space.