Kennedy Space Center

**Disclaimer: This post is written specifically for my mother, who is a lover of all things space. She dreamed of being an astronaut when she was a little girl. This post is extremely long and contains probably far too many pictures, but this is the easiest way I know how to share this experience with her.**

During our trip we got to visit the Kennedy Space Center. It was an incredible experience and my mind was amazed at all that we saw. I have a greater appreciation for the sacrifices, dreams and accomplishments of the astronauts and NASA employees, both past and present.

The John F. Kennedy Space Center is located on Merrit Island, Florida, which is east of Orlando. We left Tallahassee early the morning of Fri, May 17th and drove the 4 1/2 hours to the Space Center as quickly as we could. We only had that day to visit and wanted to spend as much of it as possible touring the site. The day was hot and humid with bright blue skies. We had to drive across a highway surrounded by water to reach the island. Once there, we practically ran from the car to the entrance because we were so excited. 

You can see the tops of the rockets in the Rocket Garden as you near the entrance to the Visitor's Complex.

Included in the price of admission is a free bus tour of the space center outside of the visitor complex. I would recommend purchasing your tickets online because they offer special deals and discounts that make the admission price a bit more affordable. We walked straight to the loading area for the tours after our security screening.

Tours start every 15 minutes and we didn't have to wait long at all before we got on a bus. Our first "stop" was the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB). We didn't stop or get off the bus, but just drove by it very slowly.The rockets and spaceships are assembled here. The building is enormous; it covers 8 acres. The stars on the flag that is painted on the building are 6 feet across, and you could drive a travel bus up each of the 9-foot wide stripes. I know, it doesn't look that big in this picture, or when we were driving past it, but that is what the tour guide told us. It is the largest single story building in the world and one of the largest buildings by volume. Wikipedia says that "the interior volume of the building is so vast that it has its own weather, including "rain clouds form[ing] below the ceiling on very humid days."

The gray strips are doors that open to allow the rockets to be driven out once they are assembled. They are the largest doors in the world and it takes 45 minutes to open them. If you look closely in the picture below, you can see some white service vans through the fence to the right of the black opening in one of the gray doors. There is a regular sized door around there that looks like a mouse hole compared to the rest of the building.

Next to the building are a couple of mobile launch pads. I'm not sure if the rockets are built on these or loaded on after they are assembled. Either way, they were pretty impressive. The crawler-transporter, the low machine that transports the rockets to the launch site, fits under these mobile launch pads and that is how the rockets are moved.

NASA has two crawler-transporters, nicknamed Hans and Franz. We didn't get to see either crawler-transporter, but here is a picture of one I found online. Each crawler weighs 2,721 tons and has a maximum driving speed of 2 miles per hour when empty and 1 mile per hour when transporting a rocket. Their combined total of miles driven during their use beginning in 1965 is just over 3400. It takes about 30 people to control one crawler.

Source

The pathway, called the crawlerway, that the crawler takes to the launch site from the Vehicle Assembly Building is covered with river rock from Tennessee and is 3.5 miles long. They use the rocks because they cause less friction and don't cause sparks. The rocks need to be replaced periodically because the weight of the crawler grinds them to dust. It takes the crawler 5 hours to drive the length of the crawlerway and it burns over 125 gallons of gas per minute. We got to see tracks left in the rocks.

We drove by the launch control building.

The buses made a stop at a viewing platform located between the Vehicle Assembly Building and the launch site. We got off the bus and climbed the four-story tower to get a view of the place. You can see the VAB in the distance to the left and the crawlerway in the picture below. The two tracks are not separate paths, but are two sides of the same crawlerway, one for each side of the crawler.

On the other side of the platform we had a great view of two different launch pads. They both look the same, so I'm only sharing a picture of one. This is where the magic happens people! Actual rockets have launched from this spot and flown into space. Whoa!

We loaded back onto the bus and headed toward the building that houses one of the Saturn V rockets. On our way there, we watched a short video about the wildlife in the area. Apparently Merritt Island, where the space center resides, is a National Wildlife Refuge. The driver stopped for a moment and we saw some manatees and an alligator in the little pond of water near the side of the road. The were very cool. I didn't get a picture because we weren't stopped for long, so you'll have to use your imagination.

Once inside the Apollo Saturn V Center, they take you through a couple of rooms where a video that explains the origins of the U.S. space program plays. In the second room you get to watch the launch process of Apollo 8, which was awesome. The control panels in that room were the actual ones used during that launch. Apollo 8 was the first rocket carrying humans to orbit the moon and land safely back on Earth. According to Wikipedia, it launched in December of 1968 and "the three-astronaut crew — Commander Frank Borman, Command Module Pilot James Lovell, and Lunar Module Pilot William Anders — became the first humans to travel beyond low Earth orbit, the first to see Earth as a whole planet, and then the first to directly see the far side of the Moon."

After the launch simulation they turn on the lights and open the doors to your right, where the Saturn V rocket is located. As you walk through the doors, your first glimpse is of the five engines (not sure if that is what they technically are, but that is what I'm calling them for lack of knowledge). They are huge!

Then you walk around to the side and realize the actual length of the rocket. It is incredible. The size is definitely beyond anything that I had ever imagined. This is the first section, or stage, of the rocket.

Below is a picture of the entire rocket so that you can understand what it actually looks like all fitted together. The Saturn V Rocket is the bottom two-thirds portion of the craft and holds the fuel and engine burners needed to launch the spacecraft beyond Earth's orbit. The top two-thirds is the actual spacecraft, known as Apollo --. I believe it said that this one would have been Apollo 19 if it had been used.

This is the second stage of the rocket.

This is the third stage of the rocket. Each stage of the rocket would fall off after its purpose was served.

The service module sat on top of the third stage of the Saturn V Rocket. This was the first part of the actual Apollo spacecraft. It was full of all the oxygen, water, electricity and other life support functions needed to support the command module. The astronauts never went into this portion. (Any of you who are spaceship experts, correct me if I am wrong on any of this.)

Then, as if the size of the entire thing wasn't crazy enough, you get to the very end where this little cone shaped command module sits. This itty-bitty (in respect to the previous portions) section was where the astronauts actually resided. That would scare the beejeebies out of me to be in this tiny little hershey's kiss with all that fire power behind me! I have never really been drawn to space travel, it has always scared me, and this didn't help that at all.

So, there is your tour of the Saturn V/Apollo Spacecraft. There were tons of other things to see as well, such as the astronaut van. This vehicle transported the astronauts to the launch pad. Riding in style!

We got to see a real live lunar module. It is the real deal and was scheduled to go up in Apollo 15 until NASA developed a new and improved version to go up instead.

 Below is the actual flight suit, worn under the space suit, of Jim Lovell on Apollo 13. 

This is the recreation of the interior of either the command module or lunar module. I can't remember which now. So tiny!

Here is a replica of the lunar rover. The tires were made of a metal mesh within some sort of rigid metal structure to provide traction and internal support. I don't suppose inflated rubber tires would have done them much good in the moon's atmosphere.

Here is a space helmet. Talk about a fish bowl. It is made from high-strength plastic and looks like a recipe for claustrophobia to me.

I think I want a pair of these moon boots. They were designed to fit over the astronauts' space shoes so that they could take them off and leave them outside to avoid tracking moon dust back into the lunar module. They would be handy to have here in New York so we wouldn't track grossness from the streets into our apartment!

They had more than one moon rock on display. They had a little chip of one out so that we could touch it, which we did. It just felt flat and smooth.

 

One of the other very cool things on display was the Apollo 14 Capsule. This is the actual command module for that mission after it landed back on Earth. It is all scorched from reentry.

This space helmet sporting visors was worn when they were out walking around on the moon. The gold material is actually a thin coating of 24k gold. They found that the gold blocked out the harmful light without disrupting the astronaut's color perception.

They had tons of different space suits on display.

I don't remember who actually wore this space suit, but it was coated with grey moon dust. We learned that moon dust is very corrosive and scratched the glass of the helmets and damaged the joints and connections of the suit.

After seeing all that we could see, we boarded a bus and headed back to the Visitor's Complex. We walked around through the Rocket Garden which displayed other versions of rockets in the space program.

This plaque at the beginning of this orange walkway read: "On July 16, 1969, more than 30 stories above the launch pad of the huge Saturn V rocket, Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin walked across this very service arm, stretching from the launch umbilical tower to the command module of Apollo 11. Their next stop: the moon's Sea of Tranquility." 

We tried sitting in a replica of the command module to see how it felt before liftoff. It was very uncomfortable and squished. Not a lot of personal space in one of these. I almost didn't make it out of there!

They are busy building the display for the Challenger space shuttle, which will be finished this summer. Too bad it wasn't ready for us to see it.

For all of the driving and testing and work that this trip had, it was all worth it, if just to make this visit. Kennedy Space Center was... (wait for it)... out of this world! (Har, har.)