Kennedy Space Centre – Cape Canaveral, Florida

 

After arriving in the early hours of the morning we all got up quite early and set off to go and visit the Kennedy Space Centre.

But first of all we went to go and say goodbye to Scott & Lynn.

Scott, Lynn, Me , Kevin & Sean

 

All of us at NASA

When we arrived we all decided that the first thing we should go on was the shuttle launch experience simulator which is apparently the closest thing to actually taking off in the real thing. We then had a look inside a Shuttle Explorer.

 

  Shuttle Explorer

We then went into the launch status centre where their was a man who was giving a talk all about the Kennedy Space Centre, the International Space station and what the future plans were which involves people going to live on the moon in about 20-25 years and in about 35 years when people going to live on mars, however, it would take 9 months to get there and would leave only 9 months to spend there and then to get back another 9 months. The robot scouts also was showing how it would be to live on mars and how they had achieved all this by sending robots up there to look first.

We then went to look at the 9 ton granite sphere showing the star constellations which just floats on the top of water. It spins slowly around and if your strong enough you can change the direction of which it is going.

 

9 ton granite celestial sphere 

After that we went to the astronaut memorial which commemorates all of those who have lost their lives in the attainment of space exploration. Which made us all think about how they were all extremely committed to their jobs.

 

Astronaut memorial plaque

This was then followed by a look around the rocket garden where there are 8 quite big rockets.

 

  Rocket garden

There was also an opportunity to sit in some of the smaller shuttles. Which we found out it did not have a lot of room inside of them.

Jo & I sat in a shuttle

We then watched a film in the huge IMAX about the International Space Station which we found really interesting seeing how they all lived whilst on the station, but again mentioned how this would help them achieve to finding out how to live on the mars and the moon. We then checked out the a small section which was dedicated to the Hubble telescope showing really amazing photographs which it had taken.

We also looked around the Early Space Exploration facility which was showing all of the very early stages of what happened at NASA.

When we visited one of the many souvenir shops we saw Jim Lovell who used to be an astronaut signing autographs.

We then went on a Space Centre tour on the bus where we saw many things such as: the 7 feet deep track they had built which accommodated moving the shuttles and rockets when they were to be moved on the crawler which must get its name as it travels at only 1mph. We also saw the vehicle assembly building which was very large and the stripes on the flag which are painted on the side of the building are 8 feet wide.

Vehicle Assembly Building

Our first stop was at the observation gantry which we climbed to the top of to get the great views of the launch pad where the most recent shuttle had launched from.

 

 view from 39 observation gantry

The second stop on the bus tour was at the Apollo/Saturn 5 centre which was amazing to see as it was just so big at 363 feet long. We went into the theatre and watched a recreation of the first landing on the moon which was really well thought out.

 

Saturn 5

Recreation of the first moon landing

Also there was a small piece of moon rock which we were able to touch in the centre.

They had also kept the original 1960’s control centres where all of the old computers and other equipment was still there from all of the Apollo missions.

 Apollo mission control

We unfortunately had to miss out visiting the international space station centre as we had to get back to the main visitor complex and we had booked into the IMAX cinema again but this time to watch the Star Trek movie which was really good to watch on such a big screen.

All of this was a very impressive first day for Sean & I in Florida but it  made us all very tired so not long after we got back we were all off to bed.

 

Alex Penney