Day Ten - In which I see a rocket!!

 June 8th


So my friends arrived late last night, they are here to relax for a few days before off to a conference in Orlando.

Relax-smalax, let's go to Kennedy Space Center!!!!

While I was waiting for them to arrive (I DID work a few hours in the morning), I posted this phone picture on facebook, to see if anyone knew where I was.

Most answers were snarky, "Parking Lot 5?" but thanks to Art, I was not disappointed. :)

"Being old enough to know who Wally Schirra is I'm going to guess Cape Canaveral. (Note for you youngsters: Wally Schirra is an astronaut from the very beginnings of the US manned space flight program and the only man to go into space in a Mercury, Gemini and Apollo spacecraft.)"


Off to the ticket booth. Quite a few dollars later, we were in, but since the bus tours only ran until early in the afternoon, we headed there first.

The first stop is a view of the shuttle launch pads. Hey where are the shuttles? I missed them?? There won't be any more?!? Sigh... (worst aerospace engineer ever)...


Regardless, it was very neat to see, especially the up close space shuttle main engine that flew on 15 separate shuttle flights. It seemed both very big (compared to us) and very small (compared to the shuttle it powered).

The pointing sisters :)

Happy Newlyweds Becky and Dan!

Shuttle Launch Pad

From there we got back on to the bus, okay slid because it was so humid. Ugh. For the record, the weather here has been much better than I expected, mostly I think because I either spent my time inside with a bunch of computers and air and humidity conditioning, or on the water with a breeze. So here on Kennedy that day was very muggy.

On to the next stop, with a quick view of some alligators on the way. We arrived at the Saturn 5 building. I wasn't really sure what to expect, the only time I was ever here was when I was 15 with a friend from school, and I don't really remember much at all. We were shuffled inside and saw a short movie about the Apollo programs, posed in front of the Saturn picture:

and then saw a cool presentation for one of the launches while we sat in front of the actual mission consoles (for me this was very exciting because that is what I also do in my space job at home).

And then they lead you through the doors to this:

 So. Very. Huge.

I'm not going to post anymore photos yet because my family arrives tomorrow and we are going sometime this week and it will be more fun if they haven't seen it yet. Okay, except for this cool picture of Becky touching a moon rock. Sweet!!!! Sweat from a billion people!!

 Oh, and for my mission ops peeps, I couldn't resist taking a picture of the console log book. Pretty much hasn't changed over the years, except these people don't draw stick figures like I do.

All in all, a wonderful day!! (You can see here I'm smiling because I'm about to leave and eat yet some more seafood!)

Note: for Becky's blog post click here and read about how I am the greatest tour guide ever. :)