Today we boarded a bus to Cape Canavarel and the Kennedy Space Center. Back in 1999 when I was in Austin Texas for a month I made the trip to the Johnson Center in Houston. I thoroughly enjoyed that and have been wanting to get to Kennedy ever since.
We met Anne & Bob in the carpark.
It started with a 45 minute bus tour around the whole site, visiting various launch pads and their assembly building.
Vehicle Assembly Building – one of the largest buildings in the world by volume.
Mobile Launch Platform (Crawler) – weighing over 8,000,000 lbs, with a maximum speed of 1 mph when loaded:
The track from the assembly building to the launch pads – used only a few days ago:
An old blast barrier – still scorched:
An Atlas V rocket that will be launched tonight carrying MUOS-3, a US Navy satellite:
We had the option of staying to watch, but there were no guarantees it would launch, and transport was going to be a problem so we opted to leave as originally planned (it’s only a tiddler anyway).
We then visited one of their exhibitions, starting with a moon landing. It was a ~30 minute simulation taking you from 5 minutes prior to launch of the Saturn V to the landing of Armstrong on the moon. Sitting in the “control room”, each display, signal, indicator, TV, etc. was used to take you through what it would have been like. Loved it.
As a series of connected presentations, next was the Saturn V rocket. You then entered the main hall where a spare unused Saturn V was lying on it’s side. Only then do you get a feel for just how big this sucker is. Everyone was gob-smacked:
Look at the complexity in each of the engines!
The bus used to transport the astronauts to the launchpad:
They had a scale model next to the big-one. Prompt another science lesson for Grace – I think she actually enjoyed it and may have learnt something!
The landing module. When it came to touch down on the moon, the plan was to set them down in an area that turned out to be too rocky. So, the crew went manual to try to find a better place to put down. When they did, they had consumed all but 20s worth of fuel. Had this been used too then they wouldn’t have been able to return from the surface of the moon. When they leave the moon, only the top section takes off (the orange part stays behind):
The car – assembly required (just think how it fits into the LM above!!!): 
The actual command module for Apollo 14:
Alan Shepard’s suit used during his moon walk for Apollo 14 – still with moon-dust:
Next stop was the new building containing the space shuttle Atlantis.
Outside – main fuel tank (fake – cos they never recovered these after launch and they’re made of material that wouldn’t survive the weather), and solid fuel booster rockets (real thing): 
As usual – a little movie, then the doors open to reveal this:
Single-use only – designed to take the weight of 4x 747s:
At this facility, they had a simulated shuttle take-off ride: video, reclined seat, lots of vibrations, and lots of noise. They also had pseudo training tools (simulators) for landing, space maintenance, etc…. all good fun.
After this, we boarded the bus for the last time that took us back to the main entry. Here, we watched an IMAX film about the International Space Station, covering sleeping, exercise, work, etc. I’m pretty sure my stomach wouldn’t allow me to live there for long, let alone actually getting there.
Wrapping it up, one last tour of their Rocket Garden (more photos & info here):
and the service arm bridge used to deliver the astronauts to the Apollo 11 command module:
The day over, Anne & Bob kindly drove us back to the hotel where we collected our bags and then shuttled us to the Disney resort.